Heart of Stone
by notmanos
Summary: (Sort of a follow up to After The Fall, but it's not necessary to read that first.) When Crowley comes to collect a favor owed to him by Sam, Dean, in a losing battle against the Mark of Cain, is left to investigate a series of strange murders all by himself. But his sanity is starting to slip, and he may be in more trouble than he ever imagined.
1. Black Lodge

_**1 – Black Lodge**_

It turned out the vampires didn't have a nest. They had a farm.

When he and Dean finally tracked them down, it was to an old factory farm in a rural area known as the "Deeps" to the locals. It was spread across several acres, and there were a couple of large outbuildings as well as the house. Dean said he'd take the house, and Sam wanted to protest they should stick together, but immediately discarded it. Dean was getting antsy and twitchy, and had unconsciously rubbed his right arm several times on the drive up here. The Mark was driving him crazy, and he wouldn't admit it. Best to let him try and get it out of his system if he could. And if it drove him farther over the edge … well, Sam would cross that bridge when it arrived. And he was sure it would arrive, sooner rather than later. Dean was in real trouble. The Mark was taking him over more and more. If Dean lost himself this time, Sam had no idea if there was any way to get him back.

Sam headed out to the first outbuilding, which looked like a big barn. The sun was coming up somewhere, but not within eyeshot. The sky was currently shading to a pale pink, and the wind was surprisingly cold. Sam had a machete, and a tranquilizer gun of cartridges full of dead man's blood. Full in this case meant he only had five shots, so he had to use them wisely. He had five more cartridges on him, but it took longer to reload this than a shotgun. Dean had headed out only with a machete, but Sam wasn't worried about him. Sam was worried about the vampires who might encounter him in his current state.

The funny thing was, of all the corpses spring up around the state with torn out throats, none had turned up in the Deeps. These vampires were at least smart enough to know that they shouldn't drop bodies anywhere near their house. Sam wished he could be sure about the size of the nest, but they had no firm intel on this, and Dean was too impatient to do any reconnaissance. Although, to be fair, so was Sam. The numbers of bodies turning up had been increasing, and they couldn't waste much more time. Too many people had died.

Sam approached the barn cautiously, and looked in between a couple of boards, where there was a gap just big enough to see through. It was dark in the barn, he saw nothing except the lumpy shadows of hay bales, but then he heard a noise. Crying.

Sam knew by now this could be a trap. But the chance that it could be genuine spurred him on. He opened the barn door and turned on the bright flashlight attached to tranq gun, which at least should have annoyed vamps if nothing else.

The barn seemed empty, save for a little girl, maybe eight years old, in a blood spotted dress, sitting on a bale of hay, tied to one of the supporting beams. She looked up upon seeing Sam, and tear tracks had smeared dirt on her face. "I wanna go home," she said, a hitch in her voice. "Can you take me home?"

"What's your name?" he asked, approaching warily. He was still looking for vampires. This felt like a trap. He still couldn't leave a little girl behind.

"Katie," she said, her voice still fragile with sobs. "Where's my mom? My mom used to be here."

Oh, that didn't sound good. "How'd you get here, Katie?" Having still not seen anything in the shadows, he slung the gun over his shoulder, and pulled out his knife to cut the ropes. Katie shied away from him, as if afraid he was going to use it on her. What had she seen?

She sniffed, trying to stop crying. "I dunno. My mom picked me up, and we were driving home … I think she hit something. Or something hit us."

Sam cut through the ropes, and wondered if this was how the vampires were getting all the victims from over a wide swath of the state. Take them on the road. Being hit by a car wouldn't kill a vampire. Might stun them, but if they were with friends, they could recover as the rest of his or her nest pulled the people out of the car. They'd have to get rid of the cars, but that wouldn't necessarily be difficult.

"Okay, Katie, my brother and I are trying to get the people behind this. We have a black car out front. I want you to go there, get in the back, lock the doors and hide."

"No!" She clung to his leg fiercely. "There are monsters out there!"

Shit. He was going to have to take her there. Maybe that was for the best. He could make sure the vamps didn't grab her again. If any of them were in the other outbuildings, they might attack Dean in the house, but he was counting on Dean to be able to hold his own for a couple minutes. That shouldn't be too much to ask.

Sam led Katie out, his gun back in his hands, and he wondered if sunrise, as slow and dim as it was, had already scared all the vamps indoors. Sam then felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the back of his leg, that dropped him to one knee. He turned, and he found Katie had just jabbed a syringe in him, and she was grinning ear to ear, showing off her many jagged teeth. "Sucker," she said, and while Sam intended to hit her with the gun, it felt out of his suddenly numb hands. The world had started to spin, and he felt his consciousness draining away.

"Wh- what did you –"

"Don't you worry your stupid little head about it, blood bag," she said. She gave him a pat on the head for emphasis.

Sam's consciousness slid sideways, and he fell into a deep darkness.

When Sam came to, he felt warm and fuzzy; heavily drugged, in other words. So drugged it took him a moment to realize he was indeed hung upside down.

His feet were bound together, and he was suspended from a hook in the ceiling. His arms were individually tied down to metal pegs in the floor. He tried to pull his hands free, but the knots were tight and well done. It took him another minute to realize he was in some kind of meat locker. Sam knew he was extremely stoned, because this struck him as funny. Either that, or it was all the blood rushing to his head. Both?

Katie was here, along with a few other kids, some teenaged, and an older couple. Vampires all. Sam counted almost a dozen. "I hope you taste better than the other hunters," the man said. "One of them had cirrhosis. His blood was disgusting."

"It was all a trap?" Even all the dead bodies scattered over the state? Sam couldn't see how that could be. It was a super elaborate trap, and would bring an awful lot of attention their way.

"Ooh, he gets it now," the woman said, with a mocking snicker. The funny thing was, she and the man almost looked like the couple from the American Gothic painting, only in more modern clothes. And, of course, vampire teeth.

Sam's eyes passed over the kids, who must have ranged in (death) age from eight to sixteen. "You're a family?"

"Like I was gonna keep the secret of immortality to myself?" the woman said. "What kind of selfish creature do you think I am?"

Two other men came in, big guys, at least in their twenties. If they were members of the family, they were the oldest kids, or Uncles. Between them they had an unconscious Dean, whom they dragged into the locker. "This one's on something," one of the men said. They dropped Dean unceremoniously to the floor, face first. The vampire Duggars gathered around him, as if contemplating ripping him apart as an appetizer. "He wouldn't go down. We got him three times, and he wouldn't drop."

The head of the family looked out the door. "Where's everybody else?"

"That's what I'm tryin' to tell yah," Uncle Vampire said. "He took out Merle and Emily and Jake and Stu and Joe and Sam. There's somethin' awful wrong with this one."

Sam had been right to call them the Duggars. How big was this fucking family?

"Susie, get the trough," the Dad said. "Let's drain him out."

The teenaged girl moved to the other side of the meat locker, where a trough shaped blood sluice, complete with old blood stains, was shoved off to the side. Sam was about to say something, stall for time, when he caught sight of Dean's pinkie twitching slightly.

Oh shit. He wasn't unconscious. He was playing dead.

Dean couldn't move as fast as a vampire, so maybe it was just the fact that their attention was elsewhere that caught them off guard. Dean suddenly jumped to his feet, swinging a machete, and beheaded three of the family in one vicious swipe. They were three of the kids, Katie included.

The mother screamed and jumped on his back, but Dean threw her over his shoulder and straight into Uncle Vamp and his twin (?), and they went down in a heap. Dad vamp stuck Dean with something, but Dean had already pivoted and cleaved his head in half, the top of his skull coming to rest near Sam's right hand.

Susie shrieked and launched herself across the room, and Dean chopped her in half in mid air, before turning and burying the machete in one of the Uncle Vamp's skull. Sam heard this kind of snarling growl, and was wondering which vampire was making it, until he realized it was Dean. His lip was curled up and his teeth were bared, and his eyes were almost incandescent with rage. But was it Dean? Or was it the Mark?

Sam preferred to think it was the Mark as the remaining vampires tackled him as one, attempting to get the machete from him as they brought him to the floor. The Mother climbed on top and went for his throat, when Dean viciously headbutt her and sent some of her teeth flying. She reared back, screaming, just as Dean got his arm free and swiped the machete through her head.

Blood splattered Sam's face, but he was lucky none got near his mouth. The last Uncle Vamp did the smart thing, he ran, but after Dean had beheaded the last vampire in the meat locker, he ran off after him. "Dean!" Sam shouted. He couldn't untie him first?

Sam distantly heard a heavy thud, and knew it was the sound of a body hitting the floor. He didn't think for a single second that it was Dean's.

What really bothered Sam was he heard that growling noise before Dean appeared in the doorway again, blood dripping off the machete. He was spattered with it, like he'd suddenly come down with a bad case of red freckles, but he seemed oblivious to it. He was also looking through Sam, like he didn't know who he was, or if he was friend or foe.

"Dean, it's me," he said, wondering if Dean was in there at all. According to Uncle Vamp's ramble, Dean had killed six vampires in the house, and he said they'd "got him" three times. Got him with what? Did they drug him too? You'd think that would drop him … except Dean had a high drug tolerance before you even factored the Mark into all of this. "Sam. Remember? Dean."

Dean was still making that noise, and still looking through him. "Dean! Snap out of it! They're dead! We're safe!"

Dean was stalking towards him, machete raised. Dean had been on a bit of a downward slide since killing Cain, but Sam had never seen him this bad, not since killing those men who had been holding Claire prisoner. "Dean!"

Finally he stopped, and Sam thought he saw something like recognition in his eyes, which focused on him, and he stopped making that noise. Dean blinked rapidly, as if just waking up. He glanced at the machete, and suddenly brought it down, but he just chopped through the ropes holding Sam's right hand down. He quickly chopped his left hand free. "Thanks," Sam said, pulling himself up to undo the ropes around his ankles. He was actually glad he had a moment to look away from Dean, and shudder. He really thought he was dead there for a second.

"Umm," Dean finally said, as Sam fell to the floor. "So they were vampire Joads?"

"Apparently." Sam got to his feet, and found it almost impossible to avoid stepping in either blood or a butchered body part. Dean had ripped through this place like a hurricane of lawnmower blades. Sam looked up in time to catch Dean rubbing his arm again. The fucking Mark. "You okay?"

"Fine. You?"

Sam nodded, and nearly stumbled. "Yeah, but I'm super stoned."

Dean snorted. "I think they cornered the market on what remains of the Phenobarbital industry. Is that even a thing anymore, or has oxy replaced it?"

Sam stared at him. "How do you know that?"

"Know what?"

"What they shot us up with?"

Dean took a few seconds too long to respond to that. "I don't. I'm guessing."

"Uh huh." He'd have to be nuts to think that Dean kept his substance abuse to alcohol alone, but every now and then, he made references to things that still surprised Sam. Like that time he talked about something like it was an acid trip, and it sounded like he was speaking from experience. And then there were his occasional dips into animal tranquilizer, which was best left alone. "Is that why it had no effect on you?"

"Oh, that's bullshit. I got a nice buzz goin' now," Dean claimed, even though he seemed as sober as Sam had ever seen him. He glanced around the room once more, and for a moment, Sam saw concern. He was wondering how he'd done this. Did he even remember?

Sam wiped the vamp blood splatter off his face, and said, "We should get out of here."

"Yeah. Got some spare gas in the trunk."

Oh good, arson. But with this many headless bodies, it was probably best to burn the place down along with the corpses. Otherwise people could bumble in here and assume this was a mass murder scene, unaware that it was just a nest of vampires. A huge nest.

But of course it was a murder scene. It was just monsters who were murdered. And almost him.

Sam was careful to keep it from his face, but inwardly he cringed. Dean was getting lost more and more. He was still trying to play it cool, but what came out in Dean tonight was a monster. It wasn't that he wasn't glad for it – he could have ended up a vampire snack without it – but he knew they were edging closer to a time when Dean would not snap out of it. When the Mark would take over and not give Dean his body back.

Maybe the worst part was Dean knew this too, but he was swallowing it back and trying to bull through, like he had done since they were kids. Like if he didn't admit something it wasn't true. So he wasn't scared as long as he didn't say he was, and he wasn't flailing as long as he kept it to himself. He wasn't drowning if he didn't call attention to it. A therapist would have a field day with Dean.

Sam was so fucking desperate to do something, he was almost at the end of his own personal rope. It was like he was watching Dean die an inch at a time, and he could do nothing but sit and watch it happen. It was a slow motion car crash, an incremental possession, an exponential corruption. The Mark was winning, and both he and Dean were losing. After all they had been through, this seemed more than wrong. He wouldn't say it wasn't fair, because that didn't come into things. None of life was ever fair. Was it fair these parents robbed their children of life by turning them into bloodsucking monsters? Was it fair they'd killed almost a dozen people (that they knew of) in the last month? Fair was not a natural state of the universe as far as Sam could tell. They'd both given up their lives to save the world, and the world was aggressively indifferent to it, and always would be. Eventually they would die and stay dead, and it was unlikely anyone would notice.

Sam kept all of this to himself as he helped splash gasoline around the meat locker, which was in the outbuilding Sam hadn't had a chance to check. But after lighting the place up, he walked across the lawn towards the main house, which Dean had already set on fire.

That was when he saw Dean, rather close to the burning house, looking at his arm. He'd rolled up his sleeve to bare the red Mark, and he was staring at it like he didn't recognize it. And he saw Dean had his Zippo in his left hand, flame alight, and suddenly Sam wondered what he was going to do with it. The Mark couldn't be burned off. It was as a part of him now as his own soul. Dean knew that as well as Sam did.

But Sam saw it. Dean was still thinking of trying to burn it off anyway. It would just hurt him, but he was so tempted by self-mutilation he was just a frozen tableau of malicious intent in front of the burning house.

That told Sam that Dean was acutely aware of how close he'd come to killing Sam. Maybe the Mark had made him want to, and it was a small miracle he'd come back to himself in time.

What was he going to do with him? Sam didn't think he could kill Dean, but he knew, in this moment, it might come down to him doing just that. And it might damn the world, but he just wouldn't. Could Dean really kill him?

Sam didn't know anymore. And some days, he just didn't care.


	2. Alphabet

_**2 –Alphabet**_

There was a time when sleep gave him something of a break from the Mark. That was no longer true.

It was like an oppressive, ever-present weight slowly crushing his brain, digging in hooks that sunk deep into his gray matter and metastasized like cancer. It was like a presence that never went away, and slowly revealed that it was always there, and never leaving him alone again.

Dean knew this dream, and he didn't want to have it again. He was in the Bunker, and even though he heard a fight going on in the front, he walked to his room and shut the door. And started pushing furniture in front of it. The dresser first, then the bed. Then he sat on the floor and leaned against the bed frame, and wondered what the fuck he was going to do.

Since he was alone here, in theory, in his mind, Dean let himself despair a little, and a few tears leaked out. He thought he could resist it, fight it off, he was a fucking Winchester and there was nothing he couldn't do. But … that was no longer true. Dean knew that the Mark was going to beat him. The battle was all but lost now. He could feel himself dying in pieces. But he'd be damned – more damned – if he ever said that to Sam.

He was really going to kill him tonight. The Mark wanted to; it glowed warm and happy at the very thought of it. "What's going on?" Cass asked. Suddenly standing in front of him.

Was this the real Cass, or just a dream approximation of him? Dean had to find out fast. He wiped away the tears, and asked, "What are you doing here?"

"You called for help."

"I didn't."

Cass's brow wrinkled in confusion. "I heard you."

Okay, not real Cass. Just his subconscious taking Cass's form. That was okay, he could live with that. He could be honest with someone for once, because he was just talking to himself. "It wasn't intentional."

There were thuds out in the corridor, and Cass looked towards the blockade barring the door. "Is there a fight going on?"

"I'm killing Sam," Dean told him. "Or the Mark version of me is. He's taking his time with it. It's no fun for him if it goes too fast."

Cass frowned. "You've had this dream before."

"Maybe a dozen times. Probably more. I gave up counting. First few times, I tried to stop it, change it, but it doesn't matter. Nothing I do ever changes the outcome. I can't even kill that Dean. I've tried. But he just laughs at me. He's a real fuckhead."

Cass sat down next to him. "The Mark … is unreasonable. It was made for destruction."

"Tell me about it." Since he was simply talking to himself, there was no harm in admitting anything. "I almost killed Sam tonight. For real. The Mark was hungry for it."

"But you didn't."

"Barely. He was tied up. The Mark wanted a bit more of a fight. Not that there's much of a fight you can make against it, it just seems to like playing with its food from time to time. Things are so easy for it it gets bored."

Now there was a thudding on the door that shook the bed frame. Cass looked, as if the other Dean had peeled back the wood. "Is this part of it?"

"Oh yes. After he's done with Sam, he comes for me. He kills me a little faster, but not by much. Also, it turns out, sometimes when you die in a dream, you don't instantly wake up."

Cass was giving him his concerned look, and Dean found it hard not to laugh. Not because it was ridiculous, but because it seemed like an under reaction. "You feel yourself dying?"

Dean nodded. "I've felt it quite a bit in my life. It gets top marks for realism. I usually wake up gasping, because I think I stop breathing psychosomatically. It's a lot of fun. I'm trying to avoid sleep now, but I never got that much to begin with. I'm gonna hafta start popping uppers or something, trucker speed, just to stay alert."

Cass's blue eyes bored into his. "This is an alarming development, Dean. A part of you could be dying."

"Really? You think I'm getting off that easy?"

"Not like that. Not physical death."

"What's left? Emotional death?"

"Psychological death. It could be killing off parts of your personality."

Dean snorted. "That's no great loss. I'm kind of a dick."

Cass had his serious face on. And that was very serious indeed. Angels would probably find an Ingmar Bergman film festival too lighthearted. "Or it could be killing your soul. This is no joke. The Mark can do that. It can supplant its wearers personality, mind, body … everything. It can hollow you out. Do you understand what that means?"

"My personality might improve?"

Again, Dean got the very unhappy scowl. Cass didn't find him funny in the least. "You become nothing but a vessel for the Mark."

Vessel. What a loaded word that was. "Like a demon vessel or an angel vessel."

"More like a demon vessel. It doesn't need your consent."

"No, it surely does not." The banging on the door had become thuds, as Mark Dean, that black eyed bastard, was now flinging himself against the door. Sometimes the barricade held; sometimes it didn't. Dean didn't know what flipped the switch, why it worked one night and not the other. Maybe just the Mark being bored again. It needed to toy with him just to keep itself entertained. "I'm such an idiot. I thought I could fight this better, you know? I'm Dean fucking Winchester. I thought I could kick its ass."

"The Mark has no weakness. It doesn't tire, and it's in you. How do win that fight?"

Excellent questions all. Dean had no answers He just shook his head, and slumped against the frame. He found himself leaning against Cass's shoulder, but he didn't care, because Cass was him too in this instance. His weird, awkward side, he supposed. "I've fought a lot of shit that should have killed me. I really thought I could do this."

Cass decided to throw him a bone. Dean should have known his ego wasn't going to take that kind of drubbing quietly. "You've fought hard, Dean, and you're continuing to fight. You must be, or the Mark wouldn't be reacting like this. But you can't fight forever. The Mark always wins. It beat Cain, it will beat you too."

"And if someone kills me, I come back as a demon. There's no way to win."

"We will find a way," Cass insisted. His mouth was set in a grim, determined line. "We haven't given up looking, and you shouldn't either."

Dean would have laughed, but he couldn't work up the energy. "It's inevitable, isn't it? Why are we trying? Just let what's going to happen happen. I'm so tired, Cass."

There looked to be genuine anger in Cass's eyes as he stood up and faced the door. "Don't give up on yourself, Dean. I haven't given up on you."

Cass held out his hand, and blue energy began to well in his eyes and his palm. Was he going to blast the Mark? Dean didn't think that would work. But maybe in a dreamscape, it might.

The room lit up blue-white, angel energy writ large, and Dean woke up back in his bed in the Bunker, reaching under his pillow for the knife he still slept with (old habits died hard). But he woke up without gasping for breath, for the first time in a long time.

He really needed to invite dream Cass to party crash more often. Maybe he'd even figure out how to get a good night's sleep again.

* * *

Sam finally set aside frustrating research on the Mark of Cain to pay attention to some alerts that had just sprung up on his computer.

He had a program that specifically scanned for odd occurrences, or at least the parameters he had set up as such. It had culled five so far, but two were of immediate significance, because they happened in the same state, only a few miles from each other. The first was the mysterious death of a rising MMA competitor, who had been discovered by the side of a busy overpass, with signs that he'd been both trampled and gored to death by a rather large bull. Considering this happened in urban Seattle, people were extremely baffled by this. (Also, he lived in an apartment downtown – the closest thing to a bull was the mechanical one at a gimmicky country western bar.) Then, a teenage football player from somewhat neighboring Edmonds was found in a car, covered in cement or something like it one day later, although no cement was found in his car or around it: it was all on him. Two strange murders in as many days, several miles apart. What did it mean? Sam started investigating, but so far all that connected them was they were both male athletes in the same state. Definitely weird. Worth checking out, although a drive to Seattle would take a while. Was Dean up to that?

"One of these days I hope to spy you viewing porn or playing some stupid game," Crowley said, making Sam jump. "Then I'd know you were a normal person. You're really disappointing me, Moose."

Sam turned to find Crowley standing there, examining his own fingernails for any faults. Of course they were perfect. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Crowley smiled, which was never a good sign. "We had a deal, you and I. I cracked an angel for you and helped bring Dean home. Now I'm collecting that debt."

Sam's stomach twisted. He was kind of sorry the drugs from earlier had worn off, because he could have used them now. "What do you want?"

Crowley's grin became wider, and Sam's bad feeling got worse. "Ooh, so nervous. What, do you think I'm going to make you dress up like the Contessa, while I play the rough, handsome stable boy? You wish, Moose. No, all I want from you is … a book."

"A book?" This seemed way too easy and/or dangerous. There were many lethal books out there.

"It's called the Bellmage Grimoire. Fetch it for me."

That name tickled Sam's memory, although he wasn't immediately sure why. He quickly searched for it, and found the reason. "Holy shit. A cursed book?" Supposedly it had been written by a "dark sorcerer", and the book used to be in the hands of a collector of such books in France, whose whole family was slaughtered and house burned down a week after it ended up in his possession. It then ended up in an old book shop, which was subsequently flooded in a freak accident that also killed the proprietor and a clerk. Wherever the book went, lethal disaster soon followed. According to the Men of Letters, it contained lethal magic, and they had wanted it for their "forbidden" vault, but it seemingly dropped off the radar in 1964, in Prague, when a man who stole it was found dead under an air conditioner, which had fallen out of an apartment and crushed him in yet another freak accident. Since then, no one knew what had become of the book, but no one was looking that hard. It might contain some good dark magic spells, but it was also too much trouble to handle. "Dude, this thing's been missing forever. I wouldn't know where to look for it. Also, it's as dangerous as hell. If somehow I could find it, I'd probably be dead the second I touched it."

Crowley waved his hand airily, as if he was boring him with trivialities. "You have all this Men of Letters crap. I'm sure if you put your muzzle to the grindstone, you'll find it. It's not like you Winchesters to give up so easily."

Of course he was going to use that against him. "This is impossible, Crowley. The Men of Letters can't work miracles. Besides, what do you want it for?"

Crowley quirked an eyebrow at him. "Ah-ah-ah, asking why was never part of it. It's what I want. We had a deal. You're not going back on it, are you?"

Sam wondered what he could do if he did, then remembered his Hellhounds. Shit. And even if he could defend against those, he was the King of Hell. There was no end to the terrible things he could do to him. Of course, Dean would kick his ass, but he didn't want to send Dean into a full tilt battle right now. He probably wouldn't come back, or at least not as a human. "No. But if I don't find any leads in 48 hours, we renegotiate. Understood?"

Crowley made a show of thinking about it, dragging it out for an insanely long time, just to be a dick. He didn't want Sam to forget who had the power here. "Fine. But I expect you to at least try, Moose. No half-assing it."

"Fine," Sam said, resenting the implication. Hell, he resented the hell out of all of this. He glanced down at his keyboard before looking back at Crowley. "But –"

"But what?" Dean asked, coming into the room. Crowley was gone.

Sam ran a hand through his hair. "Crowley was just here. He's calling in his favor."

"Really?" Dean looked around, in case Crowley left a bomb or something. Dean had a beer, and had made himself a sandwich. It didn't seem like much of a breakfast, but at least he was eating something. He never thought chow hound Dean would ever get to the point where he didn't eat, but thanks to the Mark, he didn't actually have to. It would keep him going regardless. Apparently he could go without sleep too, but Dean still seemed to need that, psychologically if nothing else. There was always something weary in his eyes nowadays. Fighting a constant psychic battle that Sam had no part in, and couldn't help with, at least not yet. "What'd he want?"

"A book, that's both cursed and missing."

Dean shrugged. "Coulda been worse."

"I know, and that's what's bothering me. What could he want with it? Why is it worth wasting a favor over?"

Sam went back to searching, and Dean ate his breakfast. It was all quiet, and incredibly tense. They were just not going to talk about how Dean almost lost it against those vampires, were they? Honestly, Sam was afraid to bring it up. He'd dodged a bullet, either through Dean's force of will or the Mark's acquiescence. He really didn't want to know which side had won. He'd learned the hard way you never ask a question you don't want a genuine answer to.

After several minutes, Dean asked, "Need help?"

"Searching?" Sam could just imagine Dean gnawing his own arm off in boredom. "No. I'm pretty sure it's a lost cause, and Crowley's doing this just to annoy me."

"Any cases then?" Dean was trying and failing to pretend he wasn't restless. Sam was just hoping it was Dean himself, and not the Mark clamoring for more blood.

He hesitated, but maybe it would be better to get Dean's mind on something else, something constructive. "Well, there's a couple of weird cases in Seattle. If you wanna go on ahead, I'll meet you there."

"What is it?"

Sam showed him the news articles, and Dean grimaced at them. "What the hell ..? Bull trampling and cement? Is this some weird ass mob who totally misunderstood the Godfather?"

Sam shrugged. "Got me. It's worth a look."

"Yeah, guess so." Dean finished off his beer and stood. "Okay, I'll get going. Keep me updated on the book search. If Crowley gives you any trouble …"

"Call you, got it." This was another worrying development. Did he still kind of think of Crowley as a friend, or at least an ally? Because he wasn't. He was the King of fucking Hell, and Sam had lost count of the times he had screwed them over and tried to kill them over the years. Hell, Dean wouldn't be saddled with the Mark if it wasn't for him. He was a motherfucking monster, and Dean shouldn't have the slightest bit of camaraderie with that devil. But he knew that made him sound bitter, when really he was only pointing out facts. So he kept this tirade to himself.

Dean really did have a knack for making non-human friends, didn't he? Considering how many he had killed over the years, that was really strange. Sam decided he had too much on his plate right now, and he'd worry about the implications of that another time.

Assuming there'd be another time.

* * *

Dean actually made it to Washington State in good time, but not stopping to sleep helped a lot. Dream Cass interrupting the slaughter had helped, but he knew better than to count on him. He was just going to see how long he could stay awake before his mind couldn't take it anymore. It was kind of nice to be alone (in theory) too, as he didn't have to make any excuses or pretend he wasn't constantly fighting the Mark. He could just mainline coffee, play his music too loud, and pretend he was almost normal, like in the old days. Not that he was ever normal. Normal-er, perhaps. Before the Mark had taken over his life.

He expected rain, but it was actually sunny, so there was that stereotype blown to hell. There was a fuckload of coffee places, though, so he stopped in one and got the biggest triple shot espresso they made and poured over the files Sam had emailed him.

The victims were men who were into sports, but that was the only tenuous connection between them. The MMA guy was named Ben Hernandez, twenty three, who was still competing in the amateur ranks but showed a lot of promise. He was six foot, shaven bald, with a nose that had clearly been broken many times, and sporting so many tattoos he could have been an artist's doodle pad. He looked every inch the rough customer, and how he ended up on the side of a road gored by a bull was anyone's guess. The last time he'd been spotted that night, he was leaving a local gym, but that was six hours before his body was found. He had a job as a bar bouncer, but he wasn't working that night.

As for the teenager, he'd been one Tyler Coupe, sixteen, a quarterback on his high school football team. He was clean cut all American, blonde and slender (whereas Ben was as muscular and wiry as a guy made of beef jerky and leather), blandly handsome if you went in for that type. He was supposed to be in that night but apparently snuck out, although his girlfriend, Brytnee (oh Christ her name was actually spelled that way? They should have let the Apocalypse happen), had no knowledge of this and claimed she hadn't met Tyler anywhere. Tyler's friends were playing dumb too. If he was looking for some easy witnesses to crack it would be the kids. Although Dean didn't know if he could show up at Brytnee's house and not pistol whip her parents. What kind of assholes gave a kid a name like that?!

Okay, yeah, time to give the coffee a rest.

Dean was looking in the trunk of the Impala, picking out a phony FBI badge, when he heard sirens close by. He selected an ID, pocketed it, and slammed the trunk shut. Since the sirens were continuing, he decided to feed his own curiosity and see what was going on.

He cut down a long alley that could have passed for a very narrow street (maybe he'd have room to get the Impala in, but there was no way he could open the doors), and it fed into a much smaller alleyway. He heard the commotion up ahead, and realized he had taken a main path right into the action. He paused at the corner and tried to casually glance around it, hoping he wasn't spotted by any 5-0.

It wasn't just police, though. An ambulance was there too, and all their focus seemed to be concentrated on something behind a Dumpster. It was only when the cops managed to push it off to the side that he saw what it was. It was a statue.

Except, no, that made no sense. Who covered a statue with a Dumpster? Sure, it could be some modern art bullshit, but who called an ambulance for that? Dean stared at the statue, which was sitting on the ground, one hand partially raised, the other down on the pavement, and noticed it had some great details. It was wearing Nikes; the jeans had a tear on the left thigh. He even had a stud in his nose. It was a guy too, young, maybe mid-twenties? Made of something fine and gray, like cement … wait a minute.

Dean looked as long as he dared before retreating around the corner, and speed dialing Sam. As soon as Sam picked up, he said, "It's not cement."

"What? Are you in Seattle already?"

"Yeah, and Coupe wasn't covered in cement. He was turned to stone."

"What? How do you know?"

"Because the cops just found another guy with the same problem. What the hell turns a person to stone?"

From the length of Sam's silence on the other end of the line, it wasn't going to be an easy question to answer. Son of a bitch.


	3. Dead Men Tell No Tales

_**3 – Dead Men Tell No Tales**_

The problem wasn't so much in figuring out what was turning men into stone, it was in narrowing it down.

There were a couple of artifacts that could do it, if they were out in the world. Powerful enough witches could throw that spell (goddamn, he hoped it wasn't witches). Sam wasn't sure any demons could do it, but he was going to look into it.

Dean sighed, and leaned against the wall. "So I have to investigate more?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Fuck." He was really hoping for something to punch. "Any connections to bulls that you know of?"

"Nope. I assumed they might be connected due to proximity, but it's just as possible these are unconnected cases."

"Goddamn it." He walked back to the Impala, trying to figure out an angle of attack in his head. "So there aren't any bull like demons, are there?"

"No. There's at least one demon god I know with hooves, though."

"Demon god? Fantastic. Could he turn people to stone?"

"Uh … I'll look into that."

Dean didn't like it when Sam was scrambling for answers. He usually had them at his fingertips. Either something weird was going on, or he was simply distracted, what with his own book chase and the whole Mark nonsense. Once he got in the car, he asked, "You okay?"

"You're asking me? I should be asking you. Did you even try and sleep?"

"Nah, I'm good." He was pretty sure he'd had enough coffee to be awake for the next three days. Seattle people liked their espressos strong.

"You might want to start wearing a spell repelling hex bag until we determine if this is a coven or not."

This was news to Dean. "There's a spell repelling hex bag?"

"Yeah. Found it in the Men of Letters archives. It doesn't always work, it depends on the strength of the witch, but it's better than nothing. I'll email you the ingredients."

"It's nothing gross, is it?"

"Umm … define gross."

"You son of a bitch."

Sam quickly smothered a laugh, but Dean heard it. "You can handle it."

"Yeah, of course I can, but I ain't gonna like it. Hey, if it is this demon god guy, wouldn't there have been omens or other weird crap?"

"It depends. I'll look over the data, see if I missed something."

"You do that. Later, Sammy." Dean hung up and dropped the phone in his pocket, wondering what his first move should be. It turned out time was a factor, as school was currently in, and he wasn't about to barge into a high school and start asking questions. So he needed to start with the gym where Ben was last seen alive, and work from there.

Dean was really conflicted about whether he should bother with a motel room or not. Sleep was probably out of the question. But parking was kind of a bitch in Seattle, so he decided to get one for that reason alone. He'd always have a place to put the Impala. He texted the name and room number to Sam, then headed over to Sterling's Gym.

He thought it was a play on Gold's Gym, but it turned out the guy who owned the place was really an old boxer named Sterling, and his picture was plastered over the sign inside the lobby. Dean didn't recognize him, but then he wasn't a huge boxing fan.

Dean went in as a Fed, supposedly looking into "similarities" between Ben's death, and a death in Oregon he just made up off the top of his head. (Who was going to check?) Sterling's Gym was a more old fashioned style boxing gym as opposed to a fitness center, although it had flyers up on a corkboard advertising muay Thai and kickboxing training, and while there was a scent of unwashed gym socks under everything, it was buried surprisingly deep.

He ended up talking to one of the staff, a burly guy named Jamal, who apparently worked with Ben. He liked Ben, that was clear; he said he had a "good work ethic" and was a really good fighter. He thought he could make it to the pros, and couldn't understand what had happened to him.

Apparently Wednesday night was like any other night. They did some sparring, some reps, and that was it. Ben seemed normal, and he didn't say anything about meeting anyone. Although Jamal did remember he brought up something about having a line on a new gig, but he didn't go into details, as he didn't want to "jinx it". Curious choice of words there.

Jamal let Dean into Ben's locker, on the off chance there were any clues. What Dean found was gym clothes in need of washing, and a half empty bottle of protein powder. He was glad he had latex gloves to put on before handling the clothes, 'cause goddamn it. He so wished Sammy was here to deal with this bullshit.

But just as Dean was shoving them all back in the locker, a card fluttered out and fell to the floor. It looked like a standard business card, but as soon as he picked it up, he saw there was nothing standard about it.

Embossed, printed on heavy stock, were the words: _Fighter, Are You Worthy?_ Followed by a phone number. And that was it.

Dean took a picture of it with his phone and sent it to Sam, then called the number. It rang twice, then a machine kicked on, and he heard a recording. "Pier 29, Riverside, one in the morning." The machine then repeated this message, and the call was terminated.

What in the holy fuck was that? Dean called the number again, but the same thing happened.

That wasn't even a proper address. He called Sam then, and told him everything as he left the gym and returned to the car, mystery card safely tucked in his pocket. "Okay. The number is unlisted, I can't trace it," Sam reported. "And I think it is an address of sorts. There is a Pier 29, and while there's no street called Riverside anywhere near there, there is a bar called Riverside close by, although it's been closed for the past two months due to fire damage."

"Fire damage?" That didn't sound demonic at all.

"Authorities blamed faulty wiring. That's all I've got."

"Huh." Dean contemplated this, looking at the card again. Where the hell had Ben gotten this? "This is as fishy as fuck, isn't it?"

"I don't think you should go alone."

"Alone where?"

"Dean," he said, his voice dark and stern. Bossy Sam was in the building. "I know you're headed to Pier 29 tonight. And until we know what we're dealing with here, you shouldn't go alone or at all."

"I've got the Mark of Cain. I think the worst thing that could ever happen to me has already happened."

"Wait until you die and come back as a demon again."

He rolled his eyes. "I'll be fine. I'm not gonna get involved if it's too much. I'm just gonna observe." In theory, that's what he was going to do. It wasn't a lie.

Sam sighed. "Do you even believe your bullshit?"

"I know what I'm doing."

"I know. That's what bothers me."

"Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's a prostitution ring or something." Okay, that was grasping at straws, but this could be anything. It only seemed supernatural because it was strange and creepy, but there were other creepy things in the world that only had to do with Human monsters.

"If you get sold into sex slavery, you be sure to let me know."

"I'm hanging up now."

"Don't do something stupid, damn you," Sam said, before Dean hung up.

Of course he was going to do something stupid. He was Dean Winchester. Stupid was his middle name.

He had lots of time to kill before one in the morning, so he drove out to Edmonds, to see if he could find and talk to Tyler's known friends and girlfriend. Dean was happy for these reminders of how terrible being a teenager and being around teenagers was, as he felt he didn't get those enough. Now he looked fondly back on rifling through Ben's dirty gym clothes.

They didn't want to talk to him because he was a Fed, but he leaned hard on one kid in particular, a nervous fellow football player named Cullen (there was another set of parents that deserved a pistol whipping), and he eventually told Dean that Tyler had snuck out that night to meet another girl, not Brytnee, but he didn't know the girl's name. All he knew was Tyler was hoping to at least get a blowjob out of the deal, because the girl was "kind of an uggo". Dean nodded, and had to suppress the urge to punch this kid in the face. It was Tyler who actually said it, and he was dead. Probably a slight overreaction, but if the girl did it to Tyler, he felt she was completely justified. Tyler's car was found in a designated "make out spot", although if anyone else was there that night, they hadn't come forward. Big shock there.

Dean stopped for a burger, and then went back to his motel room to figure out what he had. So far, the cases were definitely unrelated. On the one hand, there was the weird card inviting fighters to prove themselves, and on the other was the horndog boy who picked up the wrong girl. It suddenly occurred to him he might be dealing with a teen witch or witches, and he wished Sam was here again. Nothing made him feel older and more burned out than dealing with teenagers.

He assembled the hex bags as Sam had instructed, and actually they were kind of easy. Oh sure, rat bones were always kind of gross, but the mint and anise leaves smelled kind of nice. He threw one under the motel bed, and made one for the Impala as well as himself. You could never be too careful.

Preparing himself for tonight was the biggest deal. What weapons did he take, and how many? Not knowing what he was dealing with made planning hard. Ruby's knife and his .45 were a given, but he needed more than that. He brought a silver knife in case he was dealing with skinwalkers, even though Ben's heart was left intact. Still, what else could change into a bull?

Despite Sam's simple, to the point text message ('Don't.'), Dean left at midnight.

He found the Riverside easily, as there weren't too many bars at this time of night that were closed. Most of the façade was still intact, just charred. It looked like most of the damage had been internal, which pointed once again to something potentially demonic. A ritual perhaps? Something gone wrong. Or maybe just a demonic god paying Earth a visit.

Dean scoped it out as best he could ahead of time, but Pier 29 was run down, dark, and looked like an excellent place to score bathtub meth or a penicillin resistant strain of gonorrhea. At the time Dean checked it out, no one was there.

It was weird how quiet this part of the waterfront was. There were other piers, other bars, places doing decent business and lit up well, but 29 seemed to dwell in a circle of shadows and quiet. It made the hair on the back of Dean's neck stand on end. There was something unnatural here all right, but he couldn't pinpoint what.

At one o'clock, he watched, but nothing happened. Then, a couple minutes later, a hugely muscular man walked out on the pier. He looked like a participant in a strong man competition, with muscles in his arms so big and bulky they looked like the legs of an extremely heavy man glued onto his shoulders. He had that same muscular thickness running from his neck to his weirdly muscular calves. It just looked uncomfortable to be him.

Dean ventured out, just to see what would happen. He needed answers, and if the Michelin Man was the only one who was going to give him any, so be it.

The man was looking out at the Puget Sound, and didn't turn when Dean stepped onto the pier. But he did say, "Are you it?"

Dean didn't even know how to answer that question. "What?"

The man cracked his knuckles loudly. "You are not even worth my time. This is for professionals. You are not."

"Professional what? Fighters? Fuck you. I could beat your ass from here to Canada, musclehead."

The man's head turned slowly on his thick neck, which was barely visible beneath his bulbous shaved pumpkin of a head, and above his wide shoulders. If you could have animated an industrial freezer and given it legs, this guy would probably be the end result. "Full of yourself, aren't you, little man?"

Dean made a "come on" gesture with his hand. "Find out."

The guy charged, with a lot more speed than Dean would have given him credit for. But still it was such a telegraphed charge that Dean waited until the last second to step aside and kick him in the legs, bringing him down to his knees. His impact shook the whole dock.

Dean then punched him in the face, holding back a little as the Mark burned. If he unleashed with the power of the Mark, he'd probably take this guy's head clean off.

The guy's head barely turned, and for a second, Dean thought he saw a pinprink of golden light in his irises. "Pathetic," the man said, and caught Dean's fist as he came in for a second punch. He then threw Dean over his shoulder, sending his crashing to the dock.

Dean just managed to get his hands up and avoid going into the wood face first, but by the way the dock continued to shake, Michelin Man was on his feet and coming right for him. Okay, no more Mister Nice Guy.

Dean rolled over onto his back, just in time for Michelin to grab him by the neck, and Dean drove both feet into his stomach full force. It was like kicking a cement wall, but the guy still stumbled back, letting him go for the second. Dean then slammed a foot into his knee, making it crack and bend the other way. It should have put him down. It should have stopped him.

It didn't.

Despite having one clearly broken leg, the guy came in again, grabbing Dean's leg as he tried to kick him once more, and threw him bodily across the pier, until he slammed into a pillar back first. It jarred the breath out of his lungs, but Dean was too angry to really feel it. The Mark was burning, and he could feel it like a black tide surging within him, wanting out. It wanted to break the Michelin Man, snap him into several incongruous pieces. But Dean tamped it down as the man charged him again, and this time Michelin Man's shoulders seemed to bubble, boil, and his skin turned a deeper, spreading tan.

He didn't think about what that could mean. Dean simply reacted, rolling up to his feet and meeting the man's charge with one of his own, catching him with a vicious uppercut before ramming his knee into his gut. Michelin tried to punch him, but Dean saw it coming, caught his arm, and turned it until it snapped. He didn't know if he'd broken the arm, dislocated the shoulder, or both, and it didn't matter much. He was clearly not Human, but Dean wanted to see if he could still fight if all his limbs were broken.

But it was now that he was up close that he could see it wasn't his skin that had turned a deeper color. It was tawny fur.

The Michelin Man caught him with a punch that was like someone had just hit him with a Buick. Dean reeled back, aware the punch had really only grazed him as stars exploded in front of his eyes. If it had caught him full force, his head probably would have been torn off.

"Better," the man growled, then snorted. But he wasn't a man anymore. His big head had sprouted thick, large ivory horns the size of Dean's forearms, as the fur spread across his face, and his eyes turned to golden light. His face had pushed out into a muzzle, and his nose was a black pad on his bovine face.

"What the fuck are you?" Dean asked, as he slid a hand in his pocket and grabbed the silver knife. Had to be a skinwalker, but he didn't get this Fight Club bullshit at all. "Why did you kill Ben?"

"The weak are slaughtered. There is no place for the weak in the kingdom," he huffed. His voice, like his breath, was now coming out in explosive gasps. His hands were still hands, just covered in fur, but his feet were now large, clomping hooves. It looked like his broken leg had healed in the transformation too.

The bull man charged, but Dean was ready for him, and grabbed one of his horns to avoid being gored before driving the knife right between his massive shoulder blades.

The knife snapped like a toothpick. It never even punctured his thick hide.

The bull man made a noise that might have been laughter as he continued driving forward, snapping the railing around the pier and throwing Dean right into the water.

He landed hard, and the water of the Sound was so fucking cold it stole away his breath for a second. Dean broke the surface gasping and coughing. "What kingdom?" he said, as soon as he was able. "Who do you work for?"

The bull man was a silhouette on the pier, only his golden eyes visible in the dark. "Prove your worth."

"What?" But that's when a cold, stony hand wrapped around Dean's ankle, and pulled him down beneath the dark, cold waves.


	4. Fathom

_**4 – Fathom**_

It was as dark as it was cold beneath the water, but Dean could make out shapes, and soon more.

He could not kick free from the thing that had grabbed him and was pulling him down towards the murky bottom, and in fact the thing started climbing him. It had cold, strong hands, and when he came face to face with it, he wasn't sure if it was male or female. The face looked very human, attractive in a fine boned, ethereal way, the skin as pale and shimmery as a pearl, the hair long and seaweed green, fanned out behind them like a halo. The eyes were large and seemingly pupil less, just deep blue orbs, and his first crazy thought was "mermaid". Because it was, wasn't it? It looked human until you looked beneath the shoulders, and the body was covered in blue-green scales that tapered down into a tail. It was an actual freaking mermaid. He didn't know those existed, and he certainly didn't know they existed here. No wonder Starbucks had one as a logo.

But then the mermaid opened its mouth, revealing five rows of razor sharp teeth before lunging at his face, and every erotic fantasy he ever had about mermaids flew straight out the window.

He'd been trying to break away from it, as his need for oxygen was quickly becoming dire, but mermaids were incredibly fucking strong. Dean had no choice but to go for Ruby's knife, and he managed to get a knee up in what passed for its midsection as it tried to eat his face off, and drove the knife into its chest. The water bloomed with bluish-green blood as he slit it open, and he'd finally cut it enough to make it let him go.

He kicked desperately to the surface, and barely broke it before gasping for air. The Mark was furious, raging in his brain like a hurricane, but he held it back by force of will, even though it was fucking exhausting. But he knew the more he let it out, the more ground he was losing to it. He knew what Cass had said in his last dream was right. He was going to lose to it. It just felt a lot closer to reality than he liked.

Dean swam for shore, but kept the knife out, in case the mermaid (merman? Couldn't tell) made another grab for him. As far as he knew, these waters could be teeming with them.

When Dean crawled up on the sand, he was already shivering violently from the cold. Puget Sound waters were not warm at the best of times, but right now it might as well be a lake in Alaska. His teeth were chattering, and he almost bit his own tongue. He needed to get out of here and get warm before he caught hypothermia.

Suddenly a big shadow loomed over him, and he rolled away as a huge hoof slammed into the ground where his head had been. "Do better," the bull man huffed.

"Fuck you," Dean replied automatically, not at all sure what he meant, or what the hell was going on. Were the bull man and the mermaid working together? "What the hell is going on? What are you?"

The bull man watched, huffing, as Dean climbed back up to his feet. "I am Judgment."

"Judgment of what?"

"Warriors," he said, and charged, head lowered and horns aimed straight for him.

Dean had little time to make a decision. The cold had slowed his reflexes, and his muscles were already starting to seize. The Mark's rage was pressing against his temples like a nascent migraine, but he internally told it to fuck off too. Dean turned to avoid the bull, but kept close enough that he could drive Ruby's knife straight into one of his big gold eyes.

The bull man let out a bellow of pain and jerked his head away, almost ripping the knife out of Dean's hand, but he held onto it because it might be the only usable weapon he had. "What gives you the right to judge anyone, asshole?" Dean quickly stumbled back, putting a bit more distance between him and the bull man. The Mark was screaming at him to go for the kill, but Dean still needed answers, and he had nothing but questions.

The bull man looked at him with his one good eye, as the one on his left side was now bleeding down his face. It didn't seem to be hurting him, although you'd think it would. "You have spirit. That can be more trouble than its worth."

"Good." He honestly didn't know how to respond to this thing. It certainly wasn't responding to him, even though he'd taken its eye. "What the fuck are you? Why are you doing this? Tell me!"

"You will know when you need to know," he said, and charged again.

Dean lunged and buried his shoulder in Bull Man's midsection, but his hope that it robbed him of air didn't pan out. Dean managed to get a hold of one horn, but the other grazed his arm, ripping through his sleeve and slicing into his skin, and while he managed not to scream, the bull forced him down on the sand, going for another, better goring. Dean still had a hold of the one horn, and he brought the tip of the knife right up to the bull's one remaining eye as he had knees up in the guy's chest. It was taking all his strength not to let the bull crush him with his weight. He was heavier than any guy of his comparable size. "Stop this or I fucking blind you!" He was slowly digging the tip of the knife right into the socket, so one flick and this guy was out of eyeballs. Could he regenerate those?

The bull's one eye gazed down at him almost impassively, as if he didn't care if he got blinded or not. Maybe he didn't. Dean didn't understand anything that was going on. "Better," the bull said. "You will be informed when you are required."

"What?"

The bull man slammed his huge head down into Dean's, and the dull pain of the collision was the last thing he remembered before he blacked out.

* * *

Sam wasn't sure why he was breaking out the good spells for Crowley, but he supposed it was just habit. When he wanted to find something, he went about it in the most efficient way possible.

He'd used this to search for something that would remove the Mark of Cain, but it hadn't worked. Then again, it was probably too vague a question. To work this spell, you needed to be as specific as possible. So it might work with the Bellmage Grimoire.

As soon as he was finished with the words, and dropped the match in the bowl, the crystal over the map moved. But the location was so strange, he did it again just to make sure he didn't screw something up passive aggressively.

Nope. The crystal returned to the same spot.

He was contemplating this when he thought he heard the slightest ruffle of wings, and looked up to see he was no longer alone in the room. "Hey Cass."

He had his grim face on. It was almost comical how dour he looked. "We have to talk."

"Okay."

"Dean is getting worse."

Sam almost replied "Was it him nearly gutting me that tipped you off?", but he wasn't sure he knew about that yet. "No kidding."

"I walked into one of his nightmares when he unconsciously called out to me. He thought I was just a part of the dream, but I wasn't. The Mark is torturing him. I think it's weakening his defenses from the inside out."

Unconsciously called out to him? Sam decided to just chalk that up to more of the Cass/Dean connection, which seemed exclusive to the both of them. Then again, you save a guy from Hell, and rebel against Heaven for him, and fight through Purgatory with him, you're going to be close.

Part of Sam didn't even want to hear about this new thing Cass had uncovered. He knew the Mark was killing Dean, and he could only imagine the horrors Dean was keeping to himself. It was bad enough just gathering the bits and pieces that Dean or the Mark let slip through. "What do you mean?"

Cass shook his head, and glanced down at the map on the table. He probably guessed what kind of spell Sam had done, but not the why of it. "When he sleeps, it invades his dreams, and kills him. It lets him feel it too."

"Feel death?" Yeah, that had never crossed Sam's mind. He knew he wasn't the guy he used to be, but part of him was heartened that he hadn't quite reached the level of cruelty that so many others had. "Is that possible?"

Cass just nodded. His grim look made so much sense now.

"What's the point? Beyond general cruelty."

"It wants to encourage him not to sleep." At Sam's questioning look, he continued. "The farther Dean strays from humanity, the more of a hold it has on him."

"So if he stops eating and sleeping, the Mark has an easier time sliding into the driver's seat."

"Precisely."

"Shit." He knew Dean had driven to Seattle without sleeping, and his appetite was scattershot at best, which Sam had already known was a bad sign. "We're going to have to tell him."

Cass nodded. "Will he listen?"

That was the billion dollar question. "I don't know. All we can do is hope." Which is all they had been doing lately, and to what end? Things just kept getting worse.

For a minute they were silent in their shared misery. Then Cass finally asked, "What's in Antarctica?"

Sam looked down at the crystal, pointing resolutely at the South Pole. "The Bellmage Grimoire, apparently. I don't understand how it can be there or how I'm supposed to get it, but I –" Sam looked up, and Cass was gone. Of course he was.

But he suddenly popped back into the room, this time holding a thick block of ice. He put it on the table, and Sam could kind of see there was something in there, but it was cloudy and hard to see. He wasn't going to ask how he found it or removed it, because, angel. "Is it in there? I can't tell."

Cass made a fist and hit the ice. It shattered like spun sugar, and he pulled out what had been hidden in the center. It was actually a yellowed, aged page of a book, layered between hard plastic. Cass glanced at it before handing it over. "It's instructions."

"What?" Sam looked at the page between the plastic, but it looked to be written in Old Latin. That wasn't his favorite language.

"To find the Bellmage Grimoire. Apparently it's been enchanted and hidden in a pocket dimension. That's a spell to get it back."

"Fantastic. A multi-dimensional scavenger hunt."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

Cass gestured at the page in his hands. "Why all this trouble for a book?"

That was a very good question. And added to Crowley's interest in it, he was beginning to suspect there was no way in hell the answer was any good.

* * *

It was the cold that brought Dean back to full consciousness. And only then did he feel the dull ache in his head, and the slightly sharper pain in his arm. Son of a bitch.

Why wasn't he dead? The bull man could have killed him while he was unconscious. Maybe that was how he killed Ben. So why didn't he kill him?

He got up shivering from the cold, and saw the hoof prints went up the beach, and mysteriously became human footprints before disappearing entirely. What the fuck was going on here? He tried to connect all the threads in his head, but couldn't. Then again, he might have a concussion, which would hinder clear reasoning.

Dean tucked the knife back in his coat, and found the Impala, which seemed to take longer than he thought it should have. He was shivering so violently it took him a moment to start the car.

Back at the motel, he stripped off his wet clothes and stood under a hot shower until he got feeling back in his extremities. The goring attempt had left a deep gash across his left arm, but he figured a little Super Glue would close it. Other than that, all he had was a reddish-purple bruise on his jaw, where the bull man had grazed him with that punch. Not bad considering how weird and impossible that entire fight was. And had there been a mermaid? He wasn't completely sure he hadn't made that up.

Dean needed to get his secondary phone out of the car, because the one in his jacket had been waterlogged. (At least he could prove he'd been thrown in the water.) So he dressed in layers because fuck it, he had enough of being cold for one night. Once he retrieved it, he called Sam. "So, have been sold into sex slavery yet?"

Dean frowned at the phone. "You wanna know what actually happened, or do you wanna be a smart ass?"

"Can't I be both?"

"Sam …"

"Fine. What happened?"

So Dean told him, as best he could recall. He didn't think he had a concussion, but he didn't know how he avoided it. Could the Mark have protected him from that?

Sam laughed when he got to the mermaid part, but otherwise he kept his mouth shut until the end. "Dude, did you just fight a minotaur?"

Oh hell. That had never even occurred to him. "Did I? They exist?"

"I guess. I didn't think so, but that sounds like what you faced. Half human, half bull?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, minotaurs are real then." Sam sighed. "Why not?"

"What about the mermaid thing? Do they work with them or what?"

"Not that I know of. But it does seem like they were tag-teaming you. Are you sure you weren't just daydreaming?"

"Very funny. What the fuck is going on here?"

"Got me." Sam paused briefly before saying, "I found an entry on minotaurs in the Men of Letters archives. According to this, one of the Men of Letters thought they may have actually been a real creature, something akin to a skinwalker, but native to the Greek Isles."

"Well, I ain't in Greece, and scratch the skinwalker theory, as silver didn't work on it."

"He ascribed to it super strength, and something close to immortality. There's nothing on how to kill it, or why he even thought this was worthy of mention."

Dean sighed, leaning against the bed and taking a swig of his beer. Of course he had a six pack in his room. It was the least he deserved after fighting a mermaid and a minotaur. "Anything on mermaids?"

"Just that they were probably water sprites or spirits of the drowned mistaken for something else."

"It was no fucking sprite, it was as big as me, and it was no ghost, as I cut it and it bled."

Sam made an exasperated noise. "I don't know what to tell you. Nothing beyond that in the database. Congratulations on finding two new creatures for the record books."

"Gee, thanks." He finished his first beer, and wondered where he was supposed to take this fucked up case next. How did you start searching for a minotaur? Also, how did you kill it? At least he knew its eyes were its weak spot, but if it could regenerate them, it was only a weakness until it could grow them back.

"By the way, Cass discovered something. If you give up sleeping and eating, you know, Human stuff, it makes it easier for the Mark to take over."

Dean sighed, rubbing his eyes. Yeah, of course it did. But Sam had no idea how torturous sleep was for him nowadays. "I'll work on it."

"Please do."

There was so much Sam wasn't saying, and Dean could just about hear it in the silence. Some plea for Dean not to lose himself, even though Dean was convinced he was already halfway gone. He felt like a lost cause, and didn't know how to break it to Sam.

So he didn't. That was a revelation for another day.

* * *

Dean probably should have tried to sleep, brave the nightmare one more time, but in the end he didn't. He did go out and get some food, which felt like a concession to humanity. He also stopped at a seedy bar, where he got a couple of cheap whiskeys, and some suspect pharmaceuticals guaranteed to keep him alert.

He was still trying to piece together these cases, and couldn't. Minotaurs? Mermaids? Witches? Could it all be connected? Maybe. It was weird shit, and it seemed to be concentrated in a general area, but there weren't a lot of through lines. He was missing something. What? And why didn't the minotaur kill him? Did he assume he passed whatever weird ass test that was? Dean actually didn't see how that was possible. He didn't beat up the minotaur at all. He took its eye, sure, and threatened its other one, but that wasn't exactly an ass beating. That was pure desperation against an opponent of overwhelming strength and durability. As weak points went, it was pretty obvious. Eyes, throat, groin, knees - the cardinal points of weakness in just about every species. He could even remember teaching Sam that when he was a kid, when Dad was off on one of his hunting trips, and Dean took it upon himself to make sure Sammy could defend himself if everything went wrong. How weird was it that was a fond memory?

Since he didn't sleep, Dean was up with the sun, and was the first in line to get a triple espresso that could have stripped the paint off a boat. With a lack of other leads to follow in Ben's case, Dean drove out to the high school in Edmonds.

From the paper, the other guy turned to stone was a nineteen year old named Garret Forney. He lived in Seattle, he had no obvious connection to Tyler or Edmonds, and he seemed to be just a regular aimless guy. So how had he ended up a statue in an alleyway? More questions for the pile.

He parked out in front of the high school and watched as the teens filtered in, wondering what he should do. Talk to more of Tyler's friends, right? Probably the football team. See if anyone knew who he was sneaking out to meet that night. Guys got more chatty about "conquests" in the locker room.

Dean was just leaning on his car, finishing his coffee, when he glanced at the clot of arriving teenagers. There was one girl who hung back from the crowd, and was deliberately alone. Asian, a little chunky, with a streak of green in her black hair, Dean suspected she might be Goth since she wore all black clothing and her eyes were heavily ringed with black eyeliner. She held her books to her chest, and everything about her posture screamed afraid of the world. She looked at him –

\- and it was like he was hit right between the eyes. It was a burst of energy like an electric shock times a thousand, and he dropped his cup and grabbed his head, on the off chance it might explode. As suddenly as it had hit him, it passed, although he felt dizzy for a second afterward. What the _fuck_ was that?

Dean looked back up, and found the girl was staring at him slack jawed. Had she felt it too? Or had she caused it?

She snapped out of her shock, and ran away, headed towards the back, where sports field gave way to a bunch of rural scrub land. Dean quickly gave chase, sure he could catch up to her.

The problem was, what did he do when he caught her? If this was a whole Carrie thing, he was in deep shit.


	5. Cold Heaven

**_5 – Cold Heaven_**

Dean caught up with the girl on the football field. It helped that she stopped.

She was standing on the sidelines of the empty field, waiting for him. "I told you freaks to leave me alone," she insisted angrily. "I don't want you anywhere near my school. I don't care what my parents promised you."

Okay, this was a new wrinkle. "Kid, what the hell are you talking about? I'm Federal Agent Scott, I'm –"

"No, you're not," she interrupted with a scoff. "I felt it. I know what you are."

This was fantastic. More shit he didn't understand. "What am I?"

She glared at him like he was being a deliberate asshole. "You're one of those freaky ass cult members. I told you I want no part in this –"

Dean held his hands up, and signaled for a time out. "I'm not what you think I am."

"Bullshit."

"What's your name?"

She canted her head to the side, and her pissed look slowly gave way to confusion. "You know my name."

"Kid, I really don't."

She studied him for a moment, frowning. She wasn't unattractive. If Tyler called her an uggo he totally deserved to be turned to stone. "Wait … you're serious?"

"As a heart attack. So let's start from the beginning, huh? I'm Agent Scott, and you are ..?"

She was hesitant, but finally she said, "Cassie. Cassie Sanna."

"Great. Hello Cassie. What the hell just happened back there?"

"I – I don't know."

She was lying, but he got a sense it was out of fear. There was so much to unpack here, and he was really sorry Sam wasn't around, because maybe he could help him figure out which was the best way to start. But since it was just him, he was going to have to figure it out himself. "Look, you wanna go get a coffee, and we can figure out what the hell's going on?"

She studied him, as if making sure he wasn't a sexual predator. "I'll miss first period …"

"I'm a cop. You can miss the whole day and they can do squat." Like he suspected, that made her smile. What kid didn't like the idea of getting a free pass out of school?

There was a coffee shop down the street, because of course there was (this was an entire state seemingly built upon coffee and software), so they went there and found a quiet table, where Dean hoped to get some answers. He bought her a mocha, even though he wasn't sure she needed the caffeine (did it effect mental powers, or whatever the hell she did?), and he just got himself a plain black coffee, figuring he was getting toxic levels of caffeine at this point. By this time, he'd figured out where to start. "You said something about cult members? Are you being harassed?"

She looked down at her drink, needlessly stirring it. He knew she was just avoiding his eyes. "Yes … I mean, no. Kinda. Not really."

She hadn't even taken a drink yet. He couldn't blame the caffeine for this. "Does this cult have a name?"

Cassie scratched her head nervously. It was then Dean noticed she was wearing a bracelet with a pentagram on it. "I think they call themselves the Gorgoneions? Something like that."

"And why are they bothering you?"

She exhaled a small laughed, and licked her lips nervously as she looked out the window at the parking lot. There was nothing interesting going on out there, so he knew she was just avoiding looking at him again. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me. I specialize in weird shit."

"Not this weird."

"Let me be the judge of that."

She sighed heavily, and looked down at the table, steeling her resolve. "My parents tell me I'm the Chosen One."

"Chosen One of what?"

Now she looked at him, her hazel eyes challenging him to laugh at her. "Supposedly, I'm the reincarnation of a god."

Oh no. Not gods again. "Which one?"

"Well, that's the most ridiculous part. Medusa. You know, snake haired lady? I didn't think she was even a god, not to mention real."

Now the penny dropped. Medusa turned people to stone with a look, right? Shit. "And you're manifesting powers."

She sat back, eyes widening, "What? What the hell are you talking about?"

"You're not? You didn't meet Tyler Thursday night and turn him to stone?"

"Holy fuck, you're crazy."

She started to get up, but he put a hand on her arm and pulled her back down. "Are you saying you didn't meet Tyler Thursday night?"

She yanked her arm away, her look curdling into one of teenaged disgust. "No! I mean, yeah, I was supposed to, but I couldn't do it. I mean … I know all the girls in school are … were supposed to be crazy about him, but I wasn't. I tried, okay? But he just … wasn't my type."

Did he believe her? Dean actually thought she was telling the truth. Certainly her reaction to the powers comment seemed genuine. "Did someone else go in your place?"

She shrugged and shook her head. "I dunno. I didn't text him, I just didn't show up. I figured he'd get bored waiting for me and go home." She put her elbows on the table, and rested her head in her hands. "So my suspicion was right, wasn't it?"

"What suspicion?"

"That his death was my fault."

He didn't know why, but he felt bad for her. Maybe because her parents were crazy, or the guy she was supposed to meet was an asshole, or she was quite possibly damned to be a god vessel, who knew? He just did. "No, it's not. It's the fault of whoever killed him, and that's it."

She looked at him, and a few tears fell from her eyes. Amazingly, her eyeliner didn't smudge. "You believe me? Why the fuck would you believe a story as crazy as this?"

"'Cause I fought a minotaur last night."

Cassie gave him a befuddled look before deciding he was joking and forcing a chuckle instead. "You're not really a Fed, are you?"

It was too early to answer that question. "What happened when I first saw you? Why did you think I was a cult member?"

She bought herself some time taking a sip of her coffee, and also wiped away a couple more tears with the back of her hand. "'Cause sometimes there's this … thing that happens when I meet them. Not all of them, but it's like … static electricity, I guess? But in my head."

That was as good a description of it as anything. "But not all of them?" She shook her head. "And you don't know why?" Again, she shook her head. Goddamn it, he needed Sam for this. So much crazy, so little time.

Cassie gasped and jumped in her seat, and Dean wasn't sure why, until his eyes were drawn almost magnetically to a man who had entered the coffee shop. He was tall and bulky, built like a linebacker, with a shaven head and the tattoo of a snake on the side of his neck. Dean instantly saw his scarred knuckles, and knew this guy fought for a living. Also, possibly in prison. But Dean saw a weird kind of recognition in his eyes, and was aware they had the same thought at the same time: one of us.

Which was crazy for so many reasons. People couldn't share thoughts unless they were telepathic (and he knew damn well he wasn't), and he wasn't anything like this guy. For one, Dean could never imagine ever getting drunk enough to think that getting a tattoo on his neck was a good idea. But they both eyed each other with the same kind of startled awareness. "You're not one of us," the man said.

"No shit, Sherlock."

"I've told you to leave me alone," Cassie said, talking to Neck Tat.

It seemed like an effort for him to tear his eyes away from Dean. What the hell was happening? "You shouldn't be here. He's … I don't know what he is."

Cassie pointed at the door. "Leave me the fuck alone. I don't know how much clearer I can be."

"You heard her." Dean said.

Neck Tat glared down at him. "I've got my eye on you."

Dean met his glare with one of his own. "You don't wanna try me, pal. You will lose."

He didn't look convinced, but he didn't seem to want to fight in a busy coffee place. He left, but glared at Dean until he was out of the shop. "Was that a cult member?" Dean asked, just for confirmation.

"Yeah. I don't get it. I try to lose them, but it seems they're everywhere I go. It fucking sucks. I feel like I'm under constant surveillance."

"Welcome to modern America." He pulled out his phone and called Sam.

It was a couple of rings before he picked up, and when he did, he sounded groggy. "Yeah?"

"Oh my God, are you still asleep?"

"Dude, I didn't get to sleep until five this morning."

What time was it in Kansas? Oh, fuck, he didn't care. "Well, wake up. There's some weird shit going on and I need your help."

Sam groaned, but Dean knew guilt would get him up if nothing else. Once he was ready, he told him about Cassie and the Gorgoneions, although he left out that weird thing that happened between him and the cult guy. He still didn't know what to make of that.

"The Gorgoneions are in the database," Sam reported. "They're listed as a dangerous death cult that believes the Gorgons will return to Earth and punish the wicked. Secretive and violent."

"The Gorgons?" Dean was still trying to sift through all the crazy for the best bits, but that seemed like a little much. "Are they even gods?"

There was a pause before he answered. "Not as such, but it depends on how you look at them. They are supposedly the offspring of gods, which you'd think would put them in that camp. They're immortal creatures, save for Medusa, and supposedly they guarded the gates of the underworld."

"But they turn people to stone, right?"

"Supposedly. They have other attributes. Fangs, wings, impenetrable scales. And, again, immortal."

"But not Medusa."

"No."

"So could she brought back in some kind of ritual?"

"Possibly. I'll have to investigate it. Listen, uh, this cult is … this is pretty nuts. Would me warning you you're in real danger be any kind of deterrent?"

"No." Suddenly, something occurred to him. "Wait, this is Greek, right? Minotaurs are Greek too, aren't they?"

Cassie stared at him across the table like he was nuts. That was a fair response, although not from a girl who was the second coming of Medusa.

"I think … wait, you think the cases are connected?"

"It's too much of coincidence, isn't it?"

Sam considered it a moment. "Yeah, they must be connected. I'm just not sure how at this point. It's not like they could create a minotaur. They're crazy, they're not all powerful."

Dean's head hurt. He almost had this, he could almost grasp the answers to all of this, but they were just out of reach. "How many Gorgons are there?"

"According to classic mythology, three, counting Medusa."

"Could those other two be around, turning people to stone?"

Sam was quiet for just three seconds. "Holy fuck, Dean, get out of there now."

"It's a little late for that."

He scoffed. "The Mark of Cain isn't going to prevent you from turning to stone."

"You don't know that for sure."

"And you don't either. Gods, Dean. Gods I'm not sure how to kill, if they are indeed killable. You may have been lucky to just run into a minotaur. Stop pressing your luck."

Outside in the parking lot, he saw Neck Tat had called in some other dudes much like him. Big, muscular, a rainbow of races but still the same general body type. Guys who hadn't met a protein or weight gain powder they didn't like, but not all for show. They used those muscles too, and not in the service of anything good. They stared through the window at him, and he felt a lighter version of that earlier, "one of us" awareness that he felt earlier, and a switch flipped on. "Oh fuck."

"What?" Sam sounded alarmed.

"I think I passed the minotaur's test. I think I'm in the cult."

"Excuse me?"

"Look, Sammy, I don't get it either, but I think I was involuntarily indoctrinated. And I don't think the rest of the cult is happy about it."

Cassie waved her hand in front of his face, gaining his attention. "Are you fucking serious about the minotaur?"

Dean just shrugged. If she could believe the rest of it, you'd think the minotaur part would be a breeze. "Do cults work that way?" Sam asked.

"It looks like this one does. I'll call you back."

"Dean –"

But Dean hung up and dropped the phone in his pocket. "Okay, so, you're not a Fed," Cassie said. "But what's this about you being in the cult? How do you involuntarily join?"

"Don't ask me. It's your cult." At her frown, he said, "You know what I mean."

She looked out at her cult members, the frown deepening. "I don't want any of this shit. I don't know why they can't leave me alone."

Dean wondered if it was like the way most of the angels treated him when he was supposed to be Michael's vessel. Like being taken over by some damn thing was an honor, when all it would really do was kill you Being a sacrificial lamb sucked donkey balls. What Dean didn't understand in all of this was the cult's role. He could assume they were suppose to help it happen, but what did this recruitment drive mean? What was the end goal there? Cassie didn't know, so there was only one way he was going to get any answers.

"Why don't you stay in here for now?" Dean told her, standing up. "I'm going to go talk to the Brian Jonestown Massacre out there."

For the last five minutes, she'd been looking at him like he was a time bomb about to go off. This didn't change. "Are you crazy? I don't think they like you at all."

"At least the feeling's mutual." He walked out of the shop, and felt his phone humming in his pocket, but he ignored it. It was probably Sam, cautioning him to do nothing stupid, which, too late. Sometimes he felt his whole life came down to one stupid decision after another. Where would he be without them? Besides maybe not damned.

By the time he joined them, there were ten muscled maniacs waiting for him. Most of them had their arms crossed over their chest, and Dean noted, with some disappointment, he was one of the shortest guys. He was not short! They were all just a bunch of Sam sized freaks. "You don't belong with us," Neck Tat said.

"No shit. But I'm here now, so I guess we're stuck with each other. What's the plan?"

Dean knew it wasn't going to be that easy, but part of him sort of hoped it might be. Neck Tat's eyes narrowed, and since they were small to begin with, they almost disappeared in his doughy face. "Are you deaf as well as stupid? You're not one of us."

A guy Dean had mentally dubbed Cultist number two pulled out a hunting knife that looked like it had seen some use in its time. It had dried blood crusted at the base of the handle.

Dean knew he shouldn't kick the hornet's nest. These guys were bloodthirsty, homicidal cultists, and presumably they all survived run ins with the minotaur. But the Mark burned, it was hungry for blood, and that black tide surged, pounding against the back of his eyeballs. They may have served gods, but the Mark served only itself, only destruction. And these idiots were just meat. They simply didn't know it yet. Dean was trying to hold it back, but he could feel his resolve slipping, the Mark surging over his battlements. It wanted out. It wanted to play. "You guys really don't want to do this," Dean warned them. "I'm not who you think I am."

Neck Tat snorted. "A pretty boy idiot?"

He met his gaze steadily. "I am death. This is your only warning."

Cultist number two lunged, as Neck Tat grabbed Dean's arm and pinned them behind his back. Dean was glad he did that, because it allowed him to jump up and deliver a dropkick style blow to the knife wielder's ribcage, collapsing it in one brutal shot. He made a horrible, rasping gasp as his lungs were punctured by his own shattered bones, and he fell, convulsing, body in full panic as it strained for oxygen.

Neck Tat gave Dean a brutal kidney punch that dropped him to his numb knees, and suddenly blows were being rained down on him from four or five different fists. He tried to concentrate on the pain, use it to keep in control, but it was futile.

Dean felt his consciousness wavering, and felt the black tide surge. Here came the Mark.

And Dean welcomed unconsciousness, so he didn't have to see what it was going to do to these men.


	6. Various Methods of Escape

_**6 – Various Methods of Escape**_

Dean didn't completely lose consciousness. But he lost control, and the Mark took over. He watched everything unfold as if he was viewing it from outside his own body.

He was hidden under a pile of fists until Dean grabbed someone's arm and broke it with a clean snap, and headbutt another guy in the nose, carving out a tiny path for himself. All he needed was that bit of room, and all hell broke loose.

Dean kicked his way clear, and when Neck Tat grabbed him from behind, Dean flipped him over his shoulder and threw him into another charging steroid monster. One of them got a hold of Dean's arm, and he stamped down on the inside of his knee, breaking the leg, as he saw a knife swinging towards his face. He held up his arm and blocked it, but the blade grazed him, and the pain just made the Mark's rage fiercer.

He ripped it out of the hand of the man who tried to use it on him, and stabbed him right in the face with it. Dean ripped it out, bisecting his face, and slashed the throat of the next man coming in for him.

Dean was grabbed by the neck from behind, and took a few more kidney punches that he might have felt if the Mark wasn't in charge. But because it was the numbing effects of the shots made no difference, and Dean caught the asshole who did it right in the face with his elbow and broke his jaw. The next guy who grabbed him took a knife straight in the heart.

They tried to work as one, closing in on him en masse, but Dean just slashed, sending blood flying. He grabbed one man that tried to punch him and shoved him head first through the passenger window of a parked car. He took a punch to the throat, to the head, to the spine, took a shot in the knee and the groin, but the Mark was impervious to pain. Dean stabbed one of the men straight in the head. He thought he heard laughter, but it took Dean several long seconds to determine the sound was coming from his own mouth.

Neck Tat finally got fed up and pulled his own knife, but Dean dropped the one he had and grabbed Neck Tat's arm, eventually forcing him down onto a hood as he slowly but inexorably turned the knife in Tat's hand on himself, and he had to expend all his strength to keep Dean from stabbing him with his own knife. But in the end, it didn't work. Dean forced his hand down and stabbed him in the chest using his own blade and his own hand. He didn't need to, he just wanted to do it for maximum irony.

There was a blissful moment of nothingness, where Dean totally checked out and didn't have to see what he was doing. But then he found himself back in the driver's seat, the Mark warm and sated with blood. It almost made him feel content.

Until Dean realized he was kneeling in gore, and surrounded by dead and dying men. And ghostly echoes of pain from the blows the Mark ignored. He looked around, trying to grasp this slaughter, when he saw Cassie was in the parking lot, looking at him and the bodies around him with her hands to her mouth, as if trying not to scream. Well, this case was fucking over.

He climbed to his feet, not sure if he should try and excuse himself or not, when she moved her hands away from her mouth. "You're not human."

"I am, I –"

"You're not. What took you over?"

It was the way she said it, and the way she looked at him, that made him realize she meant it. She wasn't being euphemistic. She saw something. "How do you know something took me over?"

She made hand gestures that meant nothing. "It was just … you got this aura around you, I guess? I hadn't seen it before. It was … red. Really angry."

"Is it still around me?"

She shook her head.

Okay, she could actually see the Mark's energy or whatever. This was a horrible sign. It probably meant whatever they were doing to her in preparation for having Medusa take her over, it had already begun. He pulled up his sleeve, and showed her the Mark. She eyed it with suspicion, before coming closer. "Is that a brand?"

"It's the Mark of Cain. It … feeds on violence. That's why I tried to warn them …" For all the good it ever did. No one ever seemed to believe him until it was too late. "I'd better get out of here. You coming with me?"

He figured she'd bail, but much to his surprise, she followed him to his car. But she was strangely silent as he drove away from the scene of carnage. It was Dean who spoke next. "Tell me about this cult I just killed my way through."

She shook her head. "I don't know anything about it, really. My parents are members. And then there are guys like you - well, not like you, but you know what I mean – who seem to cause that mental static? And are super into killing things. They never seem to leave me alone, and one said it was his duty to shadow me like a fucking psycho."

"His duty?" Dean contemplated this, turning it over and over in his head. "So they're like, what? Your bodyguards?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. I don't know why I got in the car with a guy I just saw murder a whole bunch of guys either. Except those guys were dicks, so maybe I don't care that much."

It was time to put his cards on the table. There was nothing to lose now. "Okay, honesty time. My name is really Dean Winchester. I'm a guy who hunts monsters and demons for a living."

"What, like the guy in those books?"

He wished he could punch Chuck in the nose. "Yeah, exactly. I came here to look into Tyler's death."

"So that stuff about the minotaur was actually true?"

"Apparently that's the cult vetting process. How do I get out of it?"

Cassie shook her head. "I don't know. My parents don't tell me shit."

Dean hated this, but he had only one recourse. "Fine. We'll go talk to your parents."

"Umm …"

"What?"

"Maybe you should, like, change your clothes first?"

Dean glanced down, and saw he was quite liberally splattered with blood. And here he thought the meaty death smell was simply stuck in his nose. "Yeah, might be a good idea."

He stopped at the motel, but told Cassie to stay in the car, because there was no way he was inviting some sixteen year old into his room. It turned out he may as well have, because as soon as he opened the door, he found some familiar people waiting for him. "Dean – holy shit, what happened?" Sam asked, staring at the bloodstains. Cass was standing behind him, looking concerned as always.

"What are you doing here?" Dean asked, peeling off his coat. He was just going to have to burn these clothes. There was too much blood.

Sam stared at him, like he couldn't believe he'd asked such a stupid thing. "You're facing off against Gorgons. You really think I was gonna let you do that by yourself?"

"Don't you have a book to find for Crowley?"

"Fuck the book, it'll wait. Now what happened?"

Dean caught them up, briefly closing himself off in the bathroom to wipe blood off his skin before changing clothes. No point in old blood bleeding through and ruining the new stuff. He wore a black t-shirt, just in case. He felt numb, but he supposed that was good for now. Better to feel nothing than actually experience the true horror of it all. He took a swig from his flask, just to reinforce that feeling.

Sam and Cass looked at each other, and Dean knew the whole thing about the Mark taking over and killing all of those men had them concerned. Again. But Dean was tired of being worried about it. Sure, it was happening more and more, but there seemed to be fuck all he could do about it.

There was a knock on the motel room door, and before anyone answered, it opened and Cassie stuck her head inside. "I was –" she looked around at everyone, and suddenly jumped back when her eyes alighted on Cass. "Holy shit! What are you?" She held her hand over her eyes, like he was too bright to see.

"An angel," Cass said, and then looked curiously at Dean. "She can see the real me?"

"She saw when the Mark took me over too. It's weird."

"Angel?" Cassie repeated. She still had her hand over her eyes. "They exist now too?"

"Sam, Cass, this is Cassie, the Medusa vessel."

"Vessel?" she repeated, making a sour face. "That sounds … icky." She paused briefly. "Wait a sec. Sam and Dean? You guys are shitting me."

Sam sighed heavily. "The books?"

Dean nodded. "The books."

Cass approached Cassie, and tapped her on the forehead. "This should help."

She warily moved her hand away from her eyes, and blinked rapidly, looking at Cass. "It does. What did you do?"

"Your visual cortex is –"

"Never ask," Dean interrupted. "Just accept it and move on."

Cass frowned at him for that, but hey, it was true, unless you liked overly detailed explanations of things that really didn't matter that much.

"But since we're on the topic, kinda, can you see if the cult did anything to me?" Dean wondered. "Like messed with my head or something?"

Cass came over to him, and stared in his eyes, like he was genuinely seeing through his skull and visually sorting through neurons. He didn't actually put it past him. After an uncomfortable thirty seconds, he said, "There is a foreign energy in you."

Fantastic. "What is it? Can you get it out?"

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like it."

"How is that possible?" Sam wondered. "Wouldn't the Mark of Cain, I don't know, object?"

"My knowledge of the Gorgons is … lacking," Cass admitted. "I can't say I know much about the Greek pantheon in total. I've heard they were mostly hedonists."

Dean scowled, looking between them and reading between the lines. "Hold up a sec. Does anyone know anything about how we fight them?" The guilty look that flashed between Cass and Sam told him everything he needed to know. He threw up his hands in frustration. "Son of a bitch."

"I'm still investigating," Sam said. "I'll find something."

Dean nodded, wanting to believe him. Sam had a way of pulling rabbits out of hats at the last minute, so he was just going to have some faith he could do it again. And hey, at least Cass was here. Angel power was always good, especially when facing gods. "My next move was visiting her parents, since they're in the cult. Maybe they know how I get out of it."

Sam shrugged. "It's a start."

So they all piled into the Impala, and drove out to Cassie's parents place. Cassie peppered Cass with questions the whole way, mainly angel related inquiries. Who knew questions about harps would make Cass so irritated?

It was a nice little house in a cookie cutter suburb of neatly trimmed lawns and white picket fences, where it seemed like bad things never happened. There were no signs anyone belonged to an ancient death cult whatsoever. You'd think they'd make a lawn gnome specifically for that purpose.

They followed Cassie inside, as she had a key. "Mom, Dad, I'm home," she called. The house was neat, resolutely middle class, and again, no obvious signs of a death cult.

Cass stopped in the foyer, and cocked his head to the side, as if listening to something only he could hear. "Something's wrong."

Great. Dean's hand went unconsciously for his gun. "What?"

Cassie had cut through into the living room, and a few seconds later, she screamed.

They rushed after her, stopping short in the living room, Dean with his gun out, Sam holding a knife, and Cass with his angel blade, a fighting squad used to walking in mid-disaster. But they and their weapons were too late.

Sitting on the sofa was a man made of stone. On the floor beside the coffee table was the figure of a woman, stretched out as if reclining but in the process of sitting up, a knife in her right hand. She too had been turned to stone. Cassie stood over her, hands back to her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. "Wh-why would they do this?" she asked. "I don't understand!"

Dean glanced at Cass and Sam just to visually confirm it. Nope, they didn't get it either. Son of a bitch.


	7. Karma Police

_**7 – Karma Police**_

This was exactly the kind of shit that made Sam's head hurt.

Okay, accepting that the Gorgons were gods, that they were around, and had a death cult dedicated to them he could do. He had accepted loonier stuff in his lifetime. But why would one of those Gorgons kill the parents of one of their vessels? That made no sense at all. How did this benefit them? Why would they do such a thing?

Cassie was a sobbing mess, and Dean was trying to comfort her, mainly with an arm around her shoulders. It was weird, but it was also Dean. His soft spot for kids again. Even if he hadn't somehow been recruited into this cult, he would be looking out for her, because that's what he did. The Mark of Cain wasn't robbing him of his big brother tendencies, or at least not yet.

He and Cass looked around for some sort of clues about the cult, but they didn't find much. Sam found a book hidden behind a few hardcover self-help books, one with a green leather cover and the head of a snake haired woman on the front. He'd need time to completely interpret it, but a cursory scan proved it was some kind of cult handbook. He slipped it in his pocket, and hoped he had time to completely read it before it all went to hell.

Cass did find something interesting, though. Hidden behind a cabinet in the dining room was a curved blade, almost like a hand sickle, tarnished green, with another of those snake headed women on the handle. He thought it was ceremonial, possibly used for sacrifices, which was undoubtedly true. Sam wondered what would happen if they tore apart this neat suburban home. Would they find more knives and possibly skeletons under the floorboards? Sam bet there was a whole bunch of ugly secrets here, just waiting to be uncovered.

But they couldn't stay. Cassie didn't want, and it was probably for the best. There was no telling when they'd be back, if they'd be back, and if Cassie was somehow a target in all of this. But they didn't know if she was, or what the end game was here. They had a lot of fragments that didn't add up to a coherent whole yet. And what had they done to Dean, and how did they undo it?

There wasn't much choice. They returned to the motel, and tried to figure out their next move. Sam gave the cult manual to Cass, because he was an angel and could absorb and translate the information a lot faster than he could.

Dean called the strange number from the night before, the one which lead him to the minotaur, because they had an idea. This time, the message said they were to meet him at pier twelve at two in the morning. So they kept time and place moving. That was probably smart. Should have changed the number too.

They got Cassie a room next to Dean's under a fake name, and left her sleeping. They didn't feel great about leaving her alone, but they didn't have much choice. They salted the room on the off chance it would do any good, and Cass added some sigils that would, at least in theory, hide her from the view of gods. He just didn't know if it would work on the Greek pantheon.

Cass had read the manual, and gave them the highlights. Apparently it was all about being able to find the chosen vessel for Medusa, and what signs to look for. Cassie apparently checked all the boxes. Of course the Sannas were not her biological parents – they had adopted Cassie from China when she was an infant. This meant that one of these days, they might have to tell her her parents adopted her because they were cult members, and all omens pointed to her being the vessel. Sam thought maybe they could avoid telling her that. It was bad enough that her parents had always been in the cult, and were grooming her for this. To learn she was being groomed for this from day one, and maybe they only adopted her as a means to an end? Awful. He thought they should leave her with good memories of her parents, assuming she had any.

Dean was right about there being something off at the docks. There was a darkness and silence that seemed unnatural, and that was long before the man Dean called the Michelin Man (a fairly accurate description, really) walked out onto the pier. Sam ventured out, with Dean right behind him. "Why are you here again?" the muscle man said, turning to face them.

"What did you do to me?" Dean demanded.

"You were deemed worthy."

"Yeah, I figured out that part," Dean replied. "What did you do to me? I know you put something in my head."

"You were made one with the cause."

"Unmake it," Dean said.

"What cause?" Sam asked.

The muscle man eyed him with a kind of lazy disdain. "Guarding the goddess on Earth."

"Goddess? Medusa?" Dean asked, probably just for clarification.

"Of course. Who else?"

"Why does a goddess need guardians?" Sam wondered. "Can't she take care of herself?"

"Not until she's matured."

Sam tried to parse that in his head. Gods generally didn't mature. They just showed up as adult as they were ever going to be, even if that curdled into childish petulance over time. "Who are we supposed to guard her against?" Dean asked. That was actually a very good question.

"Those that killed her last incarnation."

Interesting. Did the minotaur manifest ahead of Medusa? Were they a package deal? "Who's that?" Sam asked.

"Euryale."

Dean frowned, like he didn't recognize it, but Sam did, because he'd been doing the research. "Medusa's sister?" She was one of the two.

That made Dean raise his eyebrows. "This is a family spat?"

Actually, this made more sense now. Cassie's parents were probably killed by Euryale, who maybe didn't want her sister coming back to Earth. That also meant Cassie was indeed a target. "It happens," muscle man said.

Cass suddenly appeared behind the minotaur guy, and raised his hand, which started to glow with angelic power. "Undo what you did to Dean," he commanded.

Was an angel enough to take out a minotaur? Even Cass didn't know, but it was one of those things that they had to try. The muscle man glanced back at Cass without much concern. "I can't. He killed all the others. He's the prime now."

"What does that mean?" Dean asked. A fleeting look of guilt passed over his face, but it was one of those blink and you miss it deals.

"It means you must protect her until she returns."

"She is not returning," Dean insisted. "Let the girl live her life."

The muscle man cocked his head to the side, much like Cass when he didn't understand something. "Once the process has begun, it can't be stopped."

Oh shit. "What are you doing to her?" Sam asked.

Muscle man shook his head. "Nothing. She is becoming what she was always meant to be."

Sam shared a look with Dean, and knew they both weren't sure what to do now. If they couldn't save Cassie from what was happening to her, were they supposed to just stand back and let it happen? That didn't sound like them. It was possible he was lying, but with the loaded gun that was Cass behind him? Probably not.

"So how do we kill a Gorgon?" Dean asked, jumping right to the chase.

He shrugged. "A full blood Gorgon? It's never been done. Let me know if you succeed."

Dean looked confused, but Sam understood, because, again, research. The reason Medusa was mortal was because she was part Human, or at the very least not completely god-like.

"What happens to Dean when this all over?" Cass asked. Another great question.

"He is released."

Well, that was something. The one bit of good news in all of this.

The muscle man actually started walking off the pier. "Wait a sec," Dean said. "What was that thing in the water?"

"A Triton. They're pests."

Dean nodded, like he had any idea what that was. "Okay. All I wanted to know." He then pulled out his gun and fired.

It happened so fast it took Sam by surprise. Dean simply shot the muscle guy in the head about five times (great grouping), but the muscle man simply glared at Dean, as the holes in his face healed over almost instantaneously. "You can't kill me," the minotaur said. "But I can still kill you."

"Bring it on," Dean said, hastily reloading.

"I wouldn't," Cass warned.

The minotaur looked back at Cass, eying him carefully, and nodded. He wasn't worried, but he had enough doubt about facing off with an angel that he decided not to chance it. He continued walking, and disappeared into the weird shadows that cloaked the pier.

Cass lowered his hand. "That could have gone better."

"Shoulda tried to blast that son of a bitch," Dean replied.

Cass grimaced. "Judging from his energy signature, I don't think I could have killed him either. I might have barely been able to hurt him."

"I'd have settled for that."

"So what's our next move?" Sam wondered.

Dean stowed his gun, and ran a hand through his hair. He looked both wired and tired, which was a bad combination. "We protect Cassie, and try to figure out how to kill a Gorgon."

Sam shook his head. "That's a shit plan, Dean. We still have to get that energy out of you."

He shrugged. Sam hated to see this. He was actually considering giving up, wasn't he? "Yeah, I know, but until we figure it out, we gotta do something." Dean turned his gaze away, towards Cass. "Maybe you should get me the First Blade."

Cass looked horrified at the suggestion, but before he could say anything, Sam exclaimed, "Fuck no. Are you crazy?"

"I bet I could take out a minotaur with it. And maybe a Gorgon."

"And give the Mark more of a hold on you? I don't think so, Dean. We're not that desperate yet."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "I think we're getting close."

"Sam's right," Cass said, as Sam thought he would. Giving the First Blade to Dean felt tantamount to suicide. "There's no guarantee the First Blade will work on them, but we know what it will do to you."

Dean met his gaze fearlessly. "I'm not sure we have a choice."

"We do," Sam insisted. "Let's just go back to the motel, and I'll figure something out."

"What?"

"I don't know. Give me a chance here." Sam walked back towards the car before Dean could press him further. Yeah, his research was going poorly, but he wasn't going to agree to Dean getting his hands on the First Blade again. He was lucky not to lose himself last time, and they all knew it was a minor miracle he didn't. He didn't understand why Dean was willing to risk it. He was being so cavalier about it.

And Sam circled back to the thought that Dean was giving up. Since that wasn't his normal state, he had to assume that Dean was just tired of fighting it all the time. He remembered what Cass had told him about Dean dying in his dreams, and wondered how much of that he'd take before he was ready to pull the plug. No matter how tough you were, everyone had a breaking point. He hated to think Dean had already reached his.

Dean waited until they were back in the car to give him the stink eye. "You don't think I can handle it."

Sam sighed. He so didn't want to have this discussion now. "Dean, we have time. We should use –"

"You don't."

Sam shook his head, but could feel his temper starting to get the best of him. "What do you want me to say?"

"The truth. You don't think I can handle it."

"No, all right? No, I don't. It's killing you, Dean. Do you really think you're successfully hiding that? 'Cause let me tell you, you're not."

Dean glared at him, and Sam knew he was about to get ugly, when Cass, who never officially got in the car, suddenly poked his head in from the back. "I think we have more pressing concerns at the moment." They both glanced at him, and he pointed out the windshield.

There were eight people standing around the front of the Impala. Some of them had guns, others had bats and machetes. They didn't look particularly happy, but for the moment they were just staring at them. "You could take care of all these asshats," Dean said to Cass.

"Yes, but since they're cult members, I thought you might want to talk to them first."

Sam opened his door, and got out cautiously. They didn't make any aggressive moves, but the air was pretty tense. "Where is she?" a woman asked. She was a solidly built soccer mom type, holding a sawed off shotgun.

"Who wants to know?" Dean asked, getting out on his side.

Upon seeing Dean, the cult members exchanged looks that Sam mainly interpreted as puzzled. Finally, one man, who looked like he could have been a long lost brother of Bobby's, said, "Ain't you her protector?"

Dean shrugged. "That's what Bullhead tells me. So don't you think you should let me do my fucking job?"

The soccer mom held her gun down at her side. "We wish to help. Cassandra must be made safe until the new moon."

Sam started doing mental calculations, but Cass piped up. "Two nights from now."

"That's not so bad," Dean said. It wasn't. It could have been much worse.

"Euryale is killing us off one by one," Pseudo Bobby said. "She's closing in on Cassandra."

"So you should clear off and let me get back to her, yeah?" Dean said, getting back behind the wheel. "You guys should scatter, act as a distraction, see if you can lead her away."

"And get turned to stone?" Soccer Mom replied.

"You knew the risks when you joined a death cult," Dean said, starting the car. Harsh, but fair.

Sam scowled at her. "What did you do to her? You know she's just a teenage girl, right?"

Soccer Mom got this rapturous look on her face that Sam always associated with religious zealots. "She's the Chosen One. She's Medusa incarnate."

"How do we stop this?" Sam asked.

He got a wide assortment of blank looks. "You can't stop it," Soccer Mom said. "Why would you want to?"

"Get in, Sam, we're done here," Dean said, revving the engine.

He hated to admit it, but he was right. He got back in the car and slammed the door, and the cult drifted away from the car so Dean could drive through without hitting them. Although just from the way Dean was looking at them, Sam knew Dean had been thinking of fishtailing just so he could hit a few, Luckily, he didn't.

"So how does it work exactly?" Dean asked, once they were on the road back to the motel. "A god taking a vessel? Is it more like the demon or angel variety?"

Cass, still in the backseat, shook his head. "Gods generally don't need vessels. They are fully formed entities, or are capable of making themselves so. Medusa is clearly different."

Dean glanced at Cass in the rearview mirror. "You're telling me this is new for you too?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Fantastic."

"We have two nights to figure something out," Sam said. It wasn't much of a silver lining, but it was all they had at the moment.

Sam started running a search on his phone, but he was running out of ideas on exactly what he was searching for. He hated drawing so many blanks. There should have been something, but even the Men of Letters didn't have much on the Gorgons. Other Greek gods, sure, but knowing about Dionysus wasn't helpful. (Although from the description alone, it sounded a lot like Gabriel, and he wouldn't have been surprised if he had spent some of his time on Earth under that guise.)

They were two blocks away from the motel when they first heard the sirens.

Sam didn't attribute it to anything except normal late night stuff, maybe a car accident, when he realized they weren't police sirens but fire engine sirens, and there was a bunch of smoke pouring up into the night sky. "Cass," Sam said, and pointed in the direction of the motel. Which was also the direction of the fire.

He didn't have to tell him twice. Cass disappeared from the back as Dean craned his neck, and saw it for himself. "Son of a bitch."

It was entirely possible it was mere coincidence that the motel where they were staying with Cassie caught on fire. But Sam wasn't willing to bet on it.

And now he found himself wondering if Euryale had her own cult.


	8. What Kind of Monster Are You

_**8 – What Kind Of Monster Are You**_

Dean was pretty sure he was feeling the strange energy inside of him when the throb of the Mark was overtaken by an almost insane protective urge.

Seeing the fire triggered it. Something inside him just started screaming _'protect her protect her'_. He wanted to believe it was just some kind of human decency within him, but he didn't think so. It was shouting way too loud.

By the time he found a place to park, and he and Sam left the car, Cass was there with Cassie (boy, that was going to get confusing), who looked okay, just pale and a little smoke smudged. Dean had a feeling that shocked look was just going to permanently brand itself to her face after this week. "I don't know what happened," she said. "I just woke up, and the room was on fire."

Dean looked at Sam, and whispered, "Medusa have any fire starting powers?"

He shook his head. "Not that I know of."

Dean was still dealing with this weird protective paranoia, but it seemed manageable. He couldn't wait to get this energy out of him. "We need to get out of here now."

"And go where?" Cassie wondered.

Dean shrugged. "Anywhere but here." He could swear he felt eyes on him, but every time he looked, no one was paying any attention to him or Cassie. Sam caught him looking and did the same thing, but not before mouthing "What?" at him. He had no way to explain, so he didn't. It was just a bad feeling, and one he wasn't sure he could trust.

They piled back in the car, and got out of there, leaving the gawking bystanders to watch the fire crews douse the flames. As soon as they were on the road, Cassie said, "I'm getting the idea that weird shit like this doesn't faze you guys."

"If not for weird shit, we wouldn't have lives." Dean replied. A sad but true fact he didn't like to think about too much.

"So those books were a hundred percent true? No, like, creative license?"

Sam shook his head. "Not unless Ch- Carver snuck in some stuff I missed."

"How does that work?" she wondered. "How could he write about your lives as they happened?"

"He was a prophet," Cass told her. It was worth the glance in the rearview to see the stunned look she was giving Cass.

"What?"

"The world is full of weird shit," Dean told her. "Let's just leave it there, okay?"

"That's not very comforting, Dean," Cass said. Dean looked, but no, he appeared one hundred percent serious.

"No shit it isn't. I'm not trying to be comforting."

"Um, Dean?" Sam asked. "Where are we going?"

That was a great question. Right now he was just driving, seeing if he could shake this feeling of eyes upon him. It wasn't working yet, even though they were well away from the motel by now. God, he hated this paranoia. "Not sure yet. Give me a destination."

Sam checked his phone for nearby motels, while Cass kept throwing him concerned looks from the back. Dean was doing his best to ignore them, even though it was just adding an extra itch between his shoulder blades. Was paranoia a symptom of this weird ass energy?

On top of that, he could feel the Mark starting to throb again. Goddamn it.

They found a motel several miles down the road, and more on the edge of Seattle. It seemed safe, but Dean didn't relax at all. His sense of eyes watching them didn't go away, but he could find nothing obvious to support it. He thought he was being subtle, but once they got Cassie situated in her room, Sam pulled him aside. "What is with you?"

"What?" Okay, playing dumb wasn't the best strategy, but it was reflex by now.

Sam glared at him, probably for lying. "You're as jumpy as a Leviathan in a Borax factory. Is it the Mark?"

"No. I don't think so … I've had this weird feeling since the previous motel. Like someone's watching us."

Sam looked around the dark and empty parking lot. "Now?" He nodded. Sam looked around again, slower this time, trying not to miss anything. When he finally did the circuit, he looked back at Dean and shrugged. "Unless the clerk is watching us, I don't see anything."

"Yeah, I know. I still feel it."

"When was the last time you slept?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "It's not that."

"Really? So when was it?" When Dean didn't jump to answer, he added, "How about when you last ate? Do you remember?"

"Yeah, it was … earlier." It was, wasn't it? Suddenly he wasn't sure what day it was. What time in the morning was it?

Sam was giving him that concerned frown of his, that one that sort of distantly reminded Dean of their Mom. He never told him that, because he knew it kind of ate at Sam that he never knew their mother, and he didn't want to inadvertently hurt him. But it did look uncanny. "Dean –"

"Don't start. This isn't me starting to bug out or whatever. I'm getting a very clear and real sense of being watched. I want to believe we're safe, but I don't think we are. Is that so hard to believe?"

Sam shrugged. "No. But I think you should get some rest while you can. Cass and I will keep watch."

Dean didn't like the sound of much of that. "I know it'll freak her out, so tell him to keep his distance, but I think Cass should watch over Cassie. If a god attacks, he's the best weapon we have."

Sam at least didn't argue with him on that. "Yeah, of course. I'll keep searching for something that might hurt Gorgons."

"Other than the First Blade?"

Dean got the frown again, and Sam pointed to their motel room. Dean decided not to argue, he just went inside, and wondered if the feeling of being watched would go away. Nope.

In spite of that, he took a shower, to wash some of the dried blood off him (goddamn it got itchy), and he felt deeply weary, like he could sleep, although he attributed that to caffeine crash. It had been a while since he topped off his levels. You'd think that would be against the law in this city.

Dean didn't want to sleep, but he was genuinely tired, and thought maybe he could bear closing his eyes for a few minutes. If he was lucky, maybe he could get dream Cass to show up again.

As far as Dean knew, his sleep was dreamless, or at least he recalled no dreams. He might not have been asleep long enough for it to happen. All he knew was he was suddenly awake, every nerve on alert. Something bad was about to happen, and somehow he knew it. He shrugged on his jacket and checked his weapons, and headed outside.

It was still dark, although the sky was lightening at the edges. He could see Sam sitting in the Impala, lit from beneath by his laptop, asleep where he sat, and the lot seemed as quiet and empty as it had before he went in to catch some Zs. But then he saw a strangely hot woman walking from the ice machine to her room. She was a tall brunette with long, curly hair, and a skin tight black dress that had a pretty high slit up the leg. A working girl? She seemed a lot better dressed than any hooker you'd think would work the beat down here. She caught his eyes and her blood red lips curved into a slinky smile that he found himself returning out of habit, as he slid his hand inside his jacket and wrapped his hand around the butt of his gun. It was her, wasn't it? Setting off all his alarm bells. But why? She looked human and harmless. A bit out of place, sure, but everybody could have a weird night, even hot women in expensive clothes.

Then Dean heard wings.

It wasn't like the sound you could kind of hear when an angel arrived or took off in a hurry. It was a heavy sound, like a massive bird suddenly alighting over your head. But Dean looked up, idly scanning the edges of the roof, but saw no birds.

The hot woman was much closer now, and seemed to be bound to cross his path soon. Dean pasted on one of his most charming smiles, and said, "Good morning."

"Morning to you too, gorgeous," she replied. She had a faint, sexy accent he couldn't place. "Say, you don't happen to know where a girl might get a bite to eat around here?"

"Sorry, I'm new here myself."

She came up to him, still smiling, and her look was indeed very hungry. If it wasn't for all the alarm bells going off in his head, he would have invited her into his room for a drink. "You look delicious," she said, touching the tip of her fingernail underneath his chin. "Why don't you invite me in? We could have some fun."

"I bet we could," he admitted. This close, he could see she had some impressive cleavage working for her, and she had an exotic scent, like sandalwood and rain. She was the perfect weapon of distraction, and he might have fallen for it if his paranoia wasn't screaming in his ear. "But I have a feeling I wouldn't live through it. Or you wouldn't. Two people enter, one person leaves."

Her smile broadened, and now he could see her eyeteeth were slightly elongated. They weren't quite fangs, but they were close. "Oh, not as dumb as you look. How refreshing in this day and age." She moved lightning fast, grabbing his face with those surprisingly sharp nails, and he pressed the gun point blank against her chest and fired. "Cass!" he shouted, as he continued firing, making her jerk back several steps.

But she remained standing, and while blood poured from the gaping wounds in her chest, she looked barely ruffled. And that's when Dean noticed what he thought were fallen leaves on the pavement were in fact brown feathers.

The hot lady scowled at him, her pupils changing to something more diamond shaped. "You really think your puny gun can hurt me, human?"

Claw like fingers grabbed his shoulders from behind, punching through clothes and skin, and he was physically thrown over the Impala's hood and hit the asphalt on the other side. He was vaguely aware that the gunshots had woken Sam up, and he was already getting out of the car with his own gun out.

Dean had just sat up, quickly swapping his gun (useless) for Ruby's knife, to see if he could do more damage with that, when a hot redheaded woman suddenly landed in front of him and slashed his face with her claw like hand. He blinked back blood and slashed her arm as she came in for another swipe, and while she recoiled, he got back to his feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the hot chick had sent Sam flying across the parking lot. Whatever these things were, they were strong, fast, and impervious.

A blonde one dropped down from the roof of the motel, large brown wings folding into her back, as she kicked open Cassie's door.

And was met by a bright white blast of angel energy right to the face.

She screamed, her voice going up to a very bird like shriek, as she was burned to a crisp within the blast. And that was all for the redhead and the hot chick – wings unfurled and they shot straight up into the air, quickly disappearing in a low, wispy cloud layer.

Cass stepped out into the parking, inadvertently treading on the ashes of whatever that was. "You all right?"

Dean wiped the blood from his face, and figured the cuts must have been shallow. They stung a bit, but he'd had so much worse in his lifetime. A quick glance showed him Sam was getting back up to his feet, and didn't seem to have any significant chunks taken out of him. "Fine. What the hell were those things?"

"Harpies. They're good soldiers."

"Harpies?" Dean wasn't sure he heard him right. "Aren't those scary old ladies?"

Cass shook his head. "They can appear as any kind of woman. "

"What hurts them?" Sam asked, thinking ahead. Since two got away, there was always a chance they'd attack again.

"Not much. If you have any copper knives, they seem to find that unpleasant."

"Copper?" Dean replied. They didn't have any copper that he could think of. It didn't come up a lot in the monster fighting business. He glanced at Sam, who both shook his head and shrugged. It was kind of a soft metal anyway, wasn't it?

Dean looked up at the sky, but didn't see any movement except from genuine birds. "That's why I couldn't shake the feeling I was being watched. They were up there."

"It's possible," Cass said. "They're good at reconnaissance."

Cassie appeared in the doorway behind Cass, looking tired and rumpled, and sighed heavily. "So this is my life now?"

Dean shrugged. "It could be worse."

Cass walked up to him, giving him that weird look, like he was looking through his skull and straight into his brain. "You knew the attack was coming."

"Yeah. That weird energy, I guess."

Cass grimaced, thinking about it. If it wasn't that, what else could it be?

"What's our next move here?" Sam asked, joining them. It looked like the front of his shirt took a claw swipe, but he wasn't bleeding much. Dean felt like his face could use a towel. Shallow cuts or not, facial wounds always bled like a son of a bitch. "If we relocate, they could follow us the entire way, couldn't they? So do we simply fortify here and make our stand?"

Cass considered the options before he spoke. "Both avenues are risky. We can probably guarantee they will know where we go wherever we go, but preparing for a Gorgon attack is problematic at best."

"Could they turn you to stone?" Dean wondered.

Cass shrugged. "No idea."

Sam frowned, getting frustrated. He was always grumpy after he was woken up and attacked at pretty much the same time. "There's absolutely nothing we can do? Just wait for them to attack and hope for the best?"

Cassie suddenly let out a startled shriek, and yelled, "Holy shit, what is that?"

They all turned to where she was pointing, and Crowley was standing in the parking lot, giving her an evil look. "That's just rude," he said. "Do young people today have no manners at all?"

"His face –" Cassie went on, backing into her room.

"He's a demon," Dean told her. "It's okay, we know this one."

"How the hell did you find us?" Sam asked.

Crowley scoffed. "Hello, King of Hell. Have you met me?"

Cass frowned at him. "Now is not a great time, Crowley."

Crowley gave him the faintest of smiles. "And the day I give a shit what you think, I'll be sure to let you know." He turned his gaze on Sam. "My book?"

"I'm working on it. But right now I'm a little busy."

Crowley made a show of glancing around the motel parking lot, quietly judging everything. His eyes settled on the scratches on Dean's face, and he asked, "Battling harpies now, are we?"

He shared a look with Sam. How the hell had he known that? "You know anything about fighting Gorgons?" Dean wondered.

Crowley snorted and rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me those battle axes are back. Somebody ought to tell them it's not twenty three B.C.E. anymore."

"Is that a yes or a no?" Dean asked.

"I've never fought them personally. But I know what they don't like, if that's what you're asking."

He and Sam had a purely silent, visual conversation. Maybe Crowley had just proved his worth after all.


	9. Cruelty Abounds

_**9 – Cruelty Abounds**_

According to Crowley – and at this point, they had no reason to doubt him, especially since it was Dean asking – very little worked on Gorgons, but what really pissed them off were old magiks. Like ancient blood of a goat stuff. Stuff so old it wasn't even written down.

Of course, Crowley knew a lot of it anyway, because his mother was a witch, and he was also an asshole. Okay, he didn't say the last bit, but Dean felt that last part was a given.

Cass was not a fan of black magic, and Sam was squeamish too. Dean wasn't exactly jumping for joy, but he was willing to do it, because they needed to fight with something. Currently they were going into battle against an overwhelming force unarmed. Dean just wanted a weapon he could use, beyond Cass. He still wanted the First Blade, but until he could get Cass to cough it up, this was plan B.

And Dean knew they were lucky Crowley wasn't extorting more favors for this. Part of it was the thrill of using arcane, evil magiks, and part of it was he got to pal around with Dean again. Dean was not so arrogant – or crazy – to think that. That was Sam's suggestion, whispered with a sneer. Sam didn't like Crowley acting like his wingman, and Dean got it. He was pretty sure Crowley's mancrush on him had run its course anyway. This was just nostalgia. Or Crowley was doing it deliberately piss off Cass and Sam, as he so dearly loved to see them squirm. Their evil looks seemed to make him giddy. Dean even warned Sam not to let it get to him, because he'd only encourage Crowley to be more of a smarmy dick, but it didn't work.

So while Sam and Cass were at the motel, keeping an eye out for harpies and gorgons and whatever the hell else Euryale intended to throw at them, he was in a farmer's market with Crowley, getting ingredients for the spells. Well, the ones they could actually buy. The rest would have to come from the Bunker or Crowley.

Crowley was weirdly enjoying this, to an almost obscene level. It also didn't help that there were more than a few demons, either behind the stands or in the crowds, and while they were quietly deferential to Crowley, they saved little taunting sneers for Dean, because they knew he couldn't kill them in a huge crowd, and with their boss right there. Dean loathed being put in the position of having to ignore demons right in front of him, and it started the Mark pulsing again, throbbing almost like a second heartbeat.

The farmer's market had a weird new age-y woo-woo shop, and even though eighty five percent of it was mass market crap, there was a troubling fifteen percent of it that was actual real spell shit. Dean looked for a hunter's mark or anything like that, but didn't find one. The proprietor wasn't a demon either. An actual witch? Possibly. Dean just found it really irresponsible she had actual belladonna, that anyone could buy and poison someone with.

Possibly to keep him from bitching more, Crowley went to talk to the witch who owned the place, as he needed something that wasn't on the shelf but he was sure she had, and left Dean to root through the real supplies for Solomon's Seal, mandrake, and horsetail. (Which was a plant and not an actual horse tail.) It was while Dean was going through the jars of herbs and dried plants (henbane! More poison. Holy shit, wasn't this stuff supposed to be regulated …) that he was joined in this quiet, dusty section of the shop by a woman in a blue raincoat.

From what he could tell, she was lovely. She was wearing sunglasses and a hat, so she was clearly trying not to be seen, but she had long black hair that gleamed like highly polished ebony, and skin like porcelain. Maybe she was so pale from all the gear she was wearing. "Can you believe this crap?" she finally said to him, looking at a bottle of dried mullein that was way overpriced. "Do you think it does anything remotely like the claims?"

Some of the herbs were marked with little cards saying they promoted "healing" or "prosperity", and other touristy shit like that. "Nope, it's all bullshit for the gullible."

She turned his way and smiled. Considering it was a little overcast, he didn't get the black sunglasses. "Which is why you're buying so much?"

"Yeah, I'm super gullible."

"Funny. Especially for a guy who walked in with a demon."

He turned towards her, wondering if he should go for his knife. She put down a bottle of vervain, and said, "You have no reason to fear me, guardian, I'm just kind of curious why you're consorting with demons."

"Who are you? Or should I say what?"

She turned that enigmatic smile on him once more, and he noticed her hair was moving independently of the rest of her. It was subtle, but it shifted of its own accord, moving in a breeze that wasn't there. "Call me a friend of the family, although I am neutral in the whole fight."

It was the moving hair that tipped him. "You're a Gorgon."

"You say that like there's more than three of us."

Was there a play he could make here? Ruby's knife probably wasn't going to do shit, but it was worth a shot. She smirked at him. "Honey, take one step towards me, and you're a statue. I think we both don't want that to happen, yes?"

Dean hated being ordered around by a god, but she had him, no doubt. Was that why she was wearing sunglasses? Did she actually have to look at him, or was it simply a power she could use with the snap of her fingers? He probably would never know. He doubted she'd tell him, and if she used it on him, he wouldn't be conscious enough to know. "You're the third sister, right?" He glanced around for Crowley, but he had no idea what he could do against a Gorgon if he didn't have everything he needed to throw a spell.

"I have a name," she said, but didn't offer it. And he hadn't asked Sam, so Dean didn't know it.

"And one of your sisters is trying to kill your other sister, who is currently an unrelated teenage girl. Why the hell aren't you getting involved?"

"Because Euryale has her reasons, even if they are slightly unreasonable, and Medusa can take care of herself. She has that bloody bull out looking for guardians, doesn't she? And you seem … fit. For a … well, what are you? I'm getting weird mixed signals."

"I'm Human," he insisted, and the Mark pulsed like it wanted its due. "And I didn't know I was signing up to be a guardian, I was just made one. Can you un-make me?"

She shook her head, and her hair wrapped itself around her neck like a scarf. "That's Medusa's magic. What she lacks in certain godly abilities she makes up for in cursework. She can weave a spell like a stone cold motherfucker. Which is why Euryale's so angry at her in the first place, but that's family business."

"I think it's my business now."

She shook her head, and her hair stayed where it was. Only when she was finished did it start slinking off her shoulders. "It really isn't. It won't help you in the least, guardian."

"So you're not just gods, you're fucking witches too? Fantastic."

"No. Medusa's quite adept, but Euryale and I never went in for that sort of thing. It's … unseemly, don't you think?" She put down a vial of herbs and brushed her hands like she got a bit of dirt on them. A single strand of her hair seemed to quest for the nearest shelf.

Crowley should have been back by now. The fucker was hiding, probably listening, waiting to see if he got turned to stone or not. Prick. "Why are you here, if not to kill me?"

She had a smile so slick it put Crowley's to shame. Clearly all gods and god wannabes got their facial expressions from the same Big Bag of Dicks store. "I actually hope my sisters can make peace. You have a brother, yes?"

He stiffened. "How the hell do you know that?"

"Sweetheart, I'm still a god. And I'm sure you've fought, yes? Doesn't there come a point, no matter how angry at him you are, that you just want peace? I've been there with Euryale and Medusa for a couple of centuries. Sadly, they're both unreasonable, and they keep this little death match going, even though they're doomed to repeat these same patterns over and over. I'm hoping, once Medusa returns, I can finally get these knuckleheads to agree to a truce. It has to work one of these centuries."

Dean was trying to rein in his temper, but it was clawing at the walls of his mind, and feeding heat to the Mark. It was creating a feedback loop that never went anywhere good. "There is an innocent girl back at that motel, who didn't ask for any of this. Her parents are dead, and her life is destroyed if she is lucky. If she's unlucky, your sister wears her as a meat suit, and she's just dead. At sixteen. What kind of fucking monsters are you?"

A perfectly formed black eyebrow arched over her sunglasses, and Dean knew he might be in for a smiting here. Weirdly enough, he didn't care. "Oh, I see why you're a guardian now. Ballsy little thing, aren't you? Well, for your information, uppity bastard, that's not how Medusa's rebirth works. Maybe your demon friends take people over and crush them into pieces, but we're a little more complex than that."

"Really? How? Explain it. 'Cause all I'm seeing is a girl who's getting sacrificed for no goddamned reason."

She leaned in close, and Dean knew he should be at least a little scared, because the closer she got, the more power she was shedding. It was like getting up close and personal with a nuclear furnace. "Oh, I like you. You don't know your place at all, do you? Got a huge hero complex. I don't know how you fit in the store with that much baggage, little bit. "

"Fuck you."

She tapped him on the head. That was it, just a gossamer light flick, and suddenly Dean found himself kneeling on the floor, his head swimming like he'd just taken the Impala in the face. "I could have such fun playing with you," she said, as his consciousness wavered and the Mark threatened to surge. "I could fit you with a leash and a collar. I bet my sisters would be so jealous of my new pet."

Dean glared up at her. "I dunno. I bite."

She laughed, and idly swept her hair back with her hand. Most of it obeyed, some of it didn't. "Sadly, Maddy saw you first, so I guess you're hers. You channel this rage into looking after her and her Chosen One, and I'm sure she'll be fine."

"I've killed gods before," Dean told her, the dark tide of the Mark pressing up against his eyeballs. "You'd just be another name on the list."

Her smile just got smarmier. "Darling, you're adorable, but I can't be killed. Maddy's the only vulnerable one of us, and you're in charge of her. I mean, I suppose you can kill the girl, and Maddy will just have to come back in a secondary –"

"Fuck you!" The Mark was now making his head throb like it was on the verge of going Scanners.

She studied him a moment, making a noise in the back of her throat he couldn't quite interpret. It was like a deep "hmm". "You don't look like Cain, so how did you end up with his Mark?"

"If you know what it is, you know you shouldn't try me."

"The Mark isn't enough mojo to kill me, but nice try. You know, you really ought to get that removed. It's going to be the death of you." He blinked, and she was simply gone.

Crowley, the coward, stuck his head around the shelves. "Bloody hell, Dean. How are you still alive talking to gods like that? You're pretty much begging them to turn you into an end table."

Dean glared at him. "Thanks for the help."

"There was no point in both of us getting killed."

Dean tried to stand, and found it difficult. Crowley grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet, and he hadn't wanted his help, but he was in no shape to refuse it. Also, as soon as Crowley touched him, the pain kind of abated. Right, he could heal people if he wanted. It was just generally he didn't want to. Still, Dean yanked his arm away in some stab at dignity.

Crowley leaned in, and whispered, "I bet the Mark is shouting like crazy now. Possible god kills make it all and hot and bothered."

"You know nothing about the Mark," he snapped, as it continued to make his head ache.

He raised an eyebrow at that. "I know a lot about it, Dean. I'm not a member of the God Squad, you can't lie to me. Remember those demons we met coming in? I know for a fact some of them have been fomenting rebellion against me. What say we make a small side trip, and you can feed the Mark a little demon blood, huh? A bit of a win-win for both of us."

He continued to glare at him. "I'm not doing your dirty work for you. I'm not one of your minions."

"Don't I know it. Most of them aren't stupid enough to tell a god to fuck off to her face. I'm giving you an opportunity to feed the Mark with trash before you snap and take it out on someone who may not deserve it. I am being kind to you, and I suggest you take it, because I'm not kind very often."

Dean wanted to take it out on him, smash his smug little face in, see if you could genuinely beat a King of Hell to death, and the Mark was pushing him to find out. He wanted to peel his own skin off. The Mark was like a constant drumbeat now, an annoying pulse of death that refused to be quiet. Dean tried to shove it away, but Crowley, damn it, was right. It was not calming down. It was screaming to be fed. "It's not kindness and we both know it."

Crowley cocked his head, and smiled so faintly it was hard to see. But the amusement was glowing in his eyes. "You think I'm trying to lead you to the Dark Side again? I don't need to, Dean. You will come back, no matter what you do. You know as well as I do it isn't a case of if you will lose the battle, but when. And judging from the look of it, you don't have very much farther to fall, do you?"

"I'm managing."

He scoffed. "I'm neither your brother or your angel boyfriend. I can see what's happening to you. So what's say we kill a few demons before we start the final boss battle? We could use some of their blood anyway."

Dean really wanted to say no to this. But he knew he couldn't. If he went back to the motel in the state he was now, Cass and Sam would probably lock him away in a room somewhere, or Cass would just put him to sleep for the duration, so he didn't lose it. He wasn't going to lose it, though. He told himself he wasn't, and goddamn it, he was sticking to that.

He just needed a little violence to take the edge off. And hey, if they did need demon blood for the ritual, he could always say it was warranted.


	10. Right On, Frankenstein

_**10 – Right On, Frankenstein**_

Crowley was up to something. It just wasn't clear what. Beyond getting back on Dean's good side, which was a given.

Sam didn't like this at all. Crowley never did anything for no reason, so there was a game here, he just couldn't see it yet. Maybe it was all in the price they'd pay for using such magic. The darker and heavier the magic, the more it took out of you. Magic, much like Crowley, wasn't free. Somewhere, you paid for it.

Cass was against it, and he didn't blame him. He didn't like the idea of calling on dark energies, especially with Dean currently bearing the Mark. Apparently he could be "sensitive" to it, and Cass didn't want it to drag him under further. Sam wondered if that was even possible.

Cassie was holding up well, kind of. Sam figured she was in shock. Too much weird shit had happened in too short a time, and she was sleep deprived and still in mourning for her parents. Cass was kind of helping, because she thought he was being sarcastic much of the time, mistaking his natural deadpan for a comedic choice. Cass had told her he was being serious, but she saw that as more of his humor. She also didn't believe the "god thing" was actually happening. She thought her parents were "really nutty", but it wasn't "a thing". Sam tried to tell her it was, so did Cass, but they were rolling snake eyes with her. No pun intended.

Sam knew this shit went deep when he saw no mention of Dean's very public killing spree on the news. No mention of Cassie's parents either. Cassie said her parents had "cop friends", but Sam suspected the cult ties ran deeper than she knew. Someone had covered those bits up. Was that good or bad?

Add to that Dean was gone way too long with Crowley. Sam was making his fifth unanswered call when Dean and Crowley showed up again. Dean seemed relatively mellow, which was alarming, especially since he was jittery when he left. What had happened?

They'd made a stop at a hardware store, where Dean picked up some copper pipes. Which was weird, but Dean insisted he could sharpen the ends, and they'd have weapons against the harpies. It was possible, if Dean didn't cut his own fingers off, but Sam knew he didn't need to worry about that. He had his books, and Dean had his armaments. He read up on how to hurt things, and Dean made weapons to hurt things. That was the balance of power in their relationship.

He left Cass to argue with Crowley that this was a bad idea, and followed Dean into his room, closing the door behind him. Dean put the copper pipes on the bed and sighed. "Is this where you give me a speech?" he asked.

"What happened? You were gone way too long for -"

"I encountered one of the Gorgons," Dean said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Of all possible answers, he hadn't expected that one. "What?"

"The third sister. What's her name?"

"Sthenno?"

Dean frowned at him. "That's not a name."

"Yeah, I'm afraid it is. How are you not made of stone right now?"

Dean sighed, and Sam realized that had crossed his mind as well. Uh oh, what had happened?

Dean told him, and Sam still didn't understand why he wasn't stone. "Wait a minute. She just wanted to talk to you? About how much they dislike witchcraft and Medusa's the only one who likes it?"

"I guess so."

"Dude, was she helping you?"

Dean had to think about it for a moment. "Well, considering she threatened to put a leash on me –"

"You told her to go fuck herself."

"Wouldn't you?"

Sam decided not to answer that. Sure, it was possible, but Dean had a way of letting his 'tude dictate terms, and he really hated gods. Not that he blamed him, but that was a huge chip on his shoulder. Funny how Dean had authority problems with everyone who wasn't Dad. "And what did she mean by Medusa's return being more complex than simply possessing Cassie?"

He shrugged. "Got me. She told me what it wasn't, not what it was."

So Sthenno was helping them, but not a lot. Maybe that allowed her to ride some sort of neutrality line between her sisters. This whole thing was making his head hurt, and he couldn't possibly take any more Excedrin, unless he wanted to give himself an instant bleeding ulcer.

Sam sat on the edge of the opposite bed, and decided just to say it. "Who did you hurt?"

Dean had picked up one of the pipes, and was examining it. "Pardon?"

"You're way too relaxed. You fed the Mark, didn't you?"

Dean was deliberately not looking at him. Did he really think he didn't know? "We needed some demon blood for the spell. I got it."

They did? Funny how Crowley hadn't mentioned that before they left. Also, since he was a demon, couldn't he have simply contributed some of his own blood? Crowley was just pushing Dean closer to the edge, and how did Dean not see that? The worst thought was Dean did see it, and didn't care. Sam wanted to pick him up and shake him, but the Mark might come forward then. He was lucky he wasn't gutted once. He really didn't want to push his luck and see if he could provoke it again. "Yeah, about this spell –"

"I'm doing it."

"What?"

Now Dean looked at him, and he had his resolute face on. The one that said he knew an idea was bad, but he was going to go ahead and do it anyway, because it was also the only idea on the table. "I know it's gonna rebound. It can hit me."

"Dean –"

"The Mark can take it, Sam. The Mark will spit in its face and laugh. You could be hurt, Cass could be hurt. I'll be fine."

Sam scoffed. Dean really did have the martyr thing down pat. "Not necessarily, and you know it. What if it kills you? What if the Mark takes you over?"

He shrugged. "You cured me of being a demon once."

"And it almost killed you. And me. Let Crowley do the spell, since he's the one who knows it."

He gave him the same flat stare he once gave Sam when he said he preferred cake over pie. "You really think Crowley's sticking around to help us? He's giving us the dynamite and lighting the fuse, then his ass is gone. He has no dog in this fight."

"Tell him to stay, Dean. He'll listen to you."

Dean's gaze still had that humorless flatness. Sam hated the look, because it meant he had jettisoned all hope in his soul. It was a look that said Dean was done pretending. "No he won't. And I'm not asking him. He needs to go."

Sam sat up straighter, wondering if he was finally seeing sense. "Did something else happen?"

He shook his head. "I realize I'm not exactly a Mensa candidate, but I know what he's doing. I get it, okay? He wants to push me closer to the Mark. I need you to trust me Sammy: this spell won't do it. I won't let it."

Great, guilt. Dean was good at using that too. "I'm not sure you have that much control, Dean."

"I've been fighting shit my whole life. Trust me to fight this."

Yeah, that was a quandary. Did he admit he didn't think Dean had the strength or the will to fight the Mark, or just let him do it and hopefully surprise him? Dean was right about one thing: he had been fighting shit his entire life. He was generally pretty good at it. But Sam knew he was tired, and losing. At a certain point, you just broke. It didn't mean you weren't strong enough or good enough, it just meant you were human. Sam wished, not for the first time, he could help him fight this. But this was Dean's battle alone, and he was going to swim or drown on his own. Could Sam watch him drown again? He sighed, and said, "Okay. I hate this, but if this is what you want to do …"

"It is."

Sam stood, and decided to go see if Cass and Crowley were brawling in the parking lot. If he stayed in here any longer he might say something he'd regret. But when he was at the door, Dean said, "Thanks."

It was like twisting a knife. Did Dean have any idea how faithless he was? Sam just nodded and walked out.

Crowley and Cass were just having a loud discussion, with no thrown punches or displays of angel or demon power, which was good. Sam walked over, and interrupted. "Are you going to help us or not?"

Crowley fixed him with an icy stare. "I should ask you that, Moose. I've already helped you."

"When this is done, I'll get you your damn book. Are you going to cast the spell or not?"

"I should say not. What do I care if Euryale kills her sister?"

Cass scowled. "Because there's a human in the middle. But I realize compassion isn't exactly your mandate."

Crowley grinned at him. "Hello, King of Hell. Have you met me?" And with that, Crowley disappeared.

Cass threw up his hands in disgust. "Dean cannot cast that spell."

"I'm with you, but he insists on doing it. He thinks the Mark can handle any mystical backlash."

Cass was really nearing the end of his rope here. He'd never seen him so frayed as a full, with his own grace intact angel. Sam sympathized, because he knew Dean's losing battle with the Mark was driving him to distraction, and he felt just as helpless as Sam did. A quick death was preferable to a slow motion car crash. "He doesn't know that. Let me do it."

Sam gestured to the room, where Dean was sharpening copper pipes into makeshift spears. "You talk to him. He seems to have his mind made up."

Cass gazed at the door like he could see right through it. He probably could. "There are times when his stubbornness is irritating."

That startled a laugh out of Sam. Cass gave him a questioning look, but Cassie was totally right. Cass was fucking hilarious, he just didn't know it.

* * *

Crowley hadn't just told him the spell, he gave it to him written out on a scrap of parchment in what looked like blood. Dean figured it wasn't the real thing, just Crowley being dramatic. He liked a good presentation.

It was heavy duty magic. In fact, you could call it bad mojo if you were inclined that way. It would create, in essence, a firewall between Euryale and them. She might be able to break it, but it was going to hurt her to do it. The backlash the spell would cause was supposedly unpredictable – supposedly because Dean wasn't sure he trusted Crowley on this – but it pulled energy out of the person casting it. And could cause some "physical damage", although Crowley claimed to not be a hundred percent on what or how bad, as most people who used it weren't alive after to tell the tale. Which was a detail Dean hadn't told Sam or Cass. Dean knew he wasn't going to die. He might turn demonic again, but that was curable, at least in theory. Wasn't easy. But he was counting on Cass to kick his ass and keep him from doing any damage to Sam or Cassie or anyone else.

After Cass made sure the rest of the motel was evacuated, and the desk clerk sent away, Dean started spreading out the bloody mixture and daubing the symbols on the doors of the rooms and on the parking lot, reciting the words on the parchment. He knew it was actually working – something he had wondered about – when he felt something like a reverse head rush. He was painting out what looked to be an open, reversed pentagram when he got so mysteriously weak he thought he might pass out. But then the energy of the Mark rushed in and filled the empty spaces, and he continued, the power throbbing like a migraine behind his eyes.

It was near sunset, the sky turning a petal pink, when Dean felt eyes on him again. "Here they come," he shouted to Sam and Cass, who were standing in the lot, fretting about him.

Although he continued with the symbols, Dean glanced up, and his heart skipped a beat. The sky was full of harpies. It wasn't just three this time. It looked like a dozen streaking down from the sky. Even with Cass and the copper spears, they were well and truly fucked. Here was hoping the spell worked on harpies too.

"Look away!" Cass shouted, and then suddenly lit up like a second sun, his blue-white power spreading out like a nuclear cloud, burning up the first wave of harpies before they even hit the ground. Even though Dean was looking down at the ground, he felt the heat of it, and the reflected light seemed to burn his eyes, making them water.

But some of the harpies, mainly the ones coming from oblique angles, made it. Dean heard them hit the roof, and jump down to the parking lot. Sam speared the first, and she let out a cry of pain even as she backhanded him across the face and sent him reeling. Cass quickly stepped in and took her out, because harpies could beat most things, but not angels.

Still, there seemed to be even more of them, wave after wave of them, as Euryale was clearly using them as her vanguard. Dean had to continue with the spell, even though he was aware he was fading. It was the weirdest thing, but he was sort of there and sort of not. His awareness was funneling down to a pinpoint, while the dark energy of the Mark seemed to be enveloping him, holding him up, keeping him going, and yet also waiting. The second he let go was the second it took over completely.

Talons suddenly sunk deep into his shoulder, and he was thrown back into the motel by the hot chick harpy who had almost had him and Sam for breakfast this morning. She grinned at him, her lips bruise red. "Hey, sweet cheeks. Miss me?"

The pain in his skewered shoulder was enormous, as was all the blood streaming down his arm, but Dean was aware his anger caused the Mark to surge, and the pain was just as suddenly gone. The Mark felt no pain. It only dished it out.

She'd been closing in on him, talon hand raised as if to finish the job, but she stopped, and he saw alarm in her dark hazel eyes. "What the hell are you?"

Dean couldn't see himself, even though he felt like he was standing outside his own body, but he imagined his eyes had turned black. He was distantly aware he was smiling. "Honey, I'm your worst nightmare."

And Dean punched right through her chest.


	11. Demon To Lean On

_**11 – Demon To Lean On  
**_

It happened so fast, Sam wasn't sure he believed his own eyes.

An entire flock of harpies descended on them, and even though Castiel's impressive power display took out about half of them, they still had the rest to deal with. Sam speared the first one who appeared in front of him, and while it seemed to stun her, she still backhanded him across the face. Cass stepped in before she did anymore damage, but that was okay, as Sam had two others to deal with now. He hit one in the face with the blunt end, sending her stumbling away, and stabbed the one charging at him in the throat. Kind of grisly, but maybe it would take her off the battlefield for a minute.

It was then he noticed that Dean had been cornered by one of the harpies, and at the exact same time, something exploded out her back. It took Sam a second to recognize that it was Dean's fist. And even when he recognized it, he didn't believe it.

Dean wasn't strong enough to punch through a person. Who was besides angels, some demons … the Mark of Cain. Oh no. Not now.

The harpy staggered away from Dean, holding the fist sized hole in her chest, and Sam saw something that chilled him to the bone: Dean's eyes were black.

Sam was hit from behind with a fist like granite, and dropped to his knees. He still had the presence of mind to jab the spear up and behind him, catching the harpy in the gut. "Dean!" he shouted, hoping he could reach him. But why? He couldn't reach him before. Hope sprung eternal.

Dean didn't look in his direction, just held up a finger, signaling him to wait. His eyes were back to normal, but that didn't mean anything. His attitude screamed demon. "Don't go away, hon, we're not finished here." Dean said, going after the injured harpy. He was giving her a smile that was all teeth, and could have been mistaken for a snarl.

"Cass!" Sam shouted, spearing another harpy.

Cass skewered a harpy with his angel blade and shoved her into a charging one, sending them both sprawling. Cass thought he was asking for help, but then Sam jerked his head in Dean's direction, and Cass saw him punch the injured harpy across the parking lot.

"No," Cass said, immediately heading towards him. There was so much emotion packed into that one syllable it was incredible. Long exposure to them had made Cass the angel equivalent of effusive.

Did Dean even finish the spell? Sam wasn't sure. How would they tell?

But then Sam saw Dean stop, and look almost puzzled, like he'd just woken up and didn't know where he was. Was he back? What the hell was that? Dean looked at his blood covered fist like it belonged to someone else.

Cass noticed, because his aggressive posture softened. "Dean, is that you?"

Dean nodded, and that made him stumble. Cass caught him and held him up straight, as Dean looked around and tried to catch his bearings. "What the hell happened?" he asked. "One second, I was there, and then … it doesn't happen like that."

"This is why I didn't want you doing the spell," Cass said, giving him his most concerned frown. "It's hurting you in ways we can't predict."

A harpy charged at them holding a sword, and Cass just held up a hand and fried her, while still propping Dean up. Dean patted Cass on the shoulder, a long ago determined sign that Cass should let him go. Cass had come to Dean's aid enough that they now had an unspoken language of their own signals. "I'm okay. Help Sam. I gotta finish this."

Sam speared another harpy and caught another one in the face with the blunt end, but then talons ripped into his arm, and he was tossed into the Impala, hitting it shoulder first. Something cracked, and he didn't think it was the car.

He got two more before he got kicked in the face, and while Sam struggled to stand, Cass blasted another hole in the harpy ranks, giving him a moment to catch his breath. "What's going on?" Sam asked, wincing. It was either a bone in his shoulder or a bone in his back that broke. Which was worse?

"The magicks being used, it's causing the Mark to react in a strange way."

"Will he be okay?"

Cass shrugged. "We're just going to have to see."

Sam was sick and tired of hearing that. But there was nothing to do about it now. Just hope they all survived to do something about it.

* * *

Dean felt split in half. On the one side was himself. And on the other side … was the Other. Demon Dean, he supposed, but it felt glib calling him that. Also, he thought it was just a demon, period, not the demon version of himself. Although, if Crowley could be trusted, that's exactly what it was. His own personal demon, given form and a voice.

"Your better half," the voice said, inside his head. He could hear it quite clearly, and would have assumed he was crazy if he didn't know it was some weird side effect of the spell.

Dean ignored it and continued with the spell, smearing lines of blood on the wall. "I'm inevitable, in more ways than one," the demon continued. "Just like you're fading, in more ways than one."

"Shut up," he muttered under his breath, drawing a runic symbol on the pavement in the smelly blood and herbs mixture.

"Luke, I'm your destiny," he said, and snickered. "You were supposed to become me in Hell anyway, if the angels hadn't grabbed you out of there so fast. You were always becoming demon one way or another. Do I really have to bring up your whole "plays better with monsters" thing, or do we take that as a given?"

Dean did his best to ignore it, and the continuing battle with the harpies, and concentrated on the final words of the spell. Cass and Sam were holding their own, but they were going to lose. The numbers were just too overwhelming, and Cass was just one angel.

He closed his eyes and focused, saying the syllables like they meant something to him. They didn't. Cass said it was an old tongue, and one specially used for dark spells. Saying them, he felt something like a thrum in his head, like someone had just thrown a power switch. "Oh yeah," the demon said. "That's the good stuff."

When Dean said the final syllable, he felt that disconnect in himself deepen, and his head swam. Something had definitely happened, but he wasn't sure what.

Two of the harpies grabbed Cass in their talons and instantly took flight, pulling him up in the air, probably in hopes of getting the deadliest weapon as far from the fight as possible. The rest swamped Sam, who, in spite of his height, was soon buried in bodies, talons and blades flashing as blood flew and his copper spear was yanked away.

Dean looked up from where he was kneeling on the pavement and saw the harpies coming for him, but he was in a passenger seat somewhere behind his eyes. Demon Dean had taken over again. But this time, he wasn't bothered by it. Let the demon rip through them like a Teflon chainsaw. "Ladies," the demon said, grinning. "You should really wait your turn. There's enough of me to go around."

They didn't look amused, as light flared brightly above. (Like gravity was going to scare Cass.) The demon stood, and pulled out Ruby's knife. He could have picked up a spear, but he wanted to go do some up close and personal damage. Dean wanted to wade into the crowd and find Sam, but the demon had no real interest in that. He was dead or he wasn't. The harpies would probably be joining him soon enough.

The first one, a brunette, made a grab for Dean's throat, but her taloned hand seemed to hit an invisible barricade. She wasn't the only one. They tried to go to Cassie's door, but something was stopping them from reaching it.

Well, what did you know? Crowley wasn't lying. The spell actually worked.

Demon Dean cackled. "Aww, too late. Well, if you'd rather, we could have some fun." He held up the knife. "Who wants to get gutted first? Ladies choice."

The dozen harpies loitered around the lot like humanoid crows, all giving him the same evil look. Somewhere in the middle of the flock, two of them hoisted a bloodied, unconscious Sam to his feet, and one of the birdwomen held a talon at his throat. "Break the spell or we take his head off."

Demon Dean snorted, while real Dean was screaming at him. The demon ignored him with an ease he almost envied. "Take his fucking head, see if I care."

"You son of a bitch," Dean shouted at him. "Do something!"

Ultimately it didn't matter. Bright light flared near the center of the flock, and most of the harpies were burned away in the presence of Cass's power. And yet, he still managed to catch Sam before he hit the ground. Dean had no idea why he often forgot Cass was such a badass, especially since he had personally experienced two extreme beat downs from him in his life. "Because you just see him as the lovesick puppy he is. Maybe it's time for a little payback," Demon Dean said.

Could he hurt an angel? Maybe. He had just punched a hole in a harpy's chest. "Don't even think about it."

"What can you do about it?" the demon replied, and he could hear the sneer.

Dean was well aware he had Ruby's knife still in his hand. If he could stab himself, would he kill the demon? Or, due to the Mark, was that simply impossible? Dean wanted to try it and see, but while he could move his eyes, he couldn't move his hand. Yet. But the demon's hold on him wasn't absolute. He just had to find a way out.

Cass must have healed Sam, because he stood up with a shocked gasp, while Cass continued to glare at Demon Dean like he could put the evil genie back in the broken bottle. "Dean, if you can hear me, don't stop fighting it."

Demon Dean snickered. "He can hear you, but fighting is getting him nowhere. I'm in control."

Sam had gotten a grasp of the situation. "You fucking bastard," he snapped. "Give him back!"

The demon was loving this. Dean could hear himself laughing. "Yeah, watch me do that. C'mon, Sammy, haven't you always wanted to kill your brother? Now's your chance."

"Oh, I so hope I haven't interrupted a family drama. Those can get so messy. And tedious."

At the sound of a newcomer's voice, they all turned, and found, standing ankle deep in harpy ashes, a statuesque woman in a tightly belted black trench coat, with waist length blonde hair that writhed like angry snakes. Although, judging from the length and thickness of her locks, those snakes were albino anacondas. It was that and the dark sunglasses she was wearing that gave her identity away. Oh, and of course her energy signature, which Dean figured was what a black hole might give off if one suddenly manifested in a parking lot. "You must be Euryale," the demon said. "What's the nickname on that? Eur? Yale? Eury?"

Cass, bless him, instinctively put himself between Euryale and Sam, for all the good it would do. But Dean appreciated the gesture.

Euryale tilted her head in a manner denoting haughty disgust. "What kind of creature are you?"

The demon spread his hands wide, as if his identity was a given. "I'm a manifestation of the Mark of Cain, but you can just call me Dean. It's shorter."

"This has gone far enough," Cass said, in his sternest voice. It made the demon chuckle, even though it wasn't aimed at him. "You can't rid the world of your sister. She always comes back. You're simply hurting the Humans caught in this mess. I can't allow you to do that."

She turned her cloaked gaze on Cass. "Ugh, Seraphim. You little pests. You know you're just your god's worker bees, right? Sexless drones made to live and die for a purpose you will never understand, and for a world that has no place for you. You're not even vermin; that would require a higher level of consciousness."

The demon clapped. "Here here, sister."

She tilted her head back in his direction. "And you're simply a misbegotten mutation of slime and bad intentions. If a dimension had a sewer, you would be the blind rats within it."

"Oh honey, if you're gonna keep talkin' like this, I insist you buy me dinner first."

She didn't just frown; her upper lip curled in disgust. "You want to be struck down, you useless piece of filth?"

The demon smiled, and Dean was surprised to find himself rooting for her. Maybe she could smite the bastard. If not a god, who? "Let's see what you got, bitch."

"No!" Sam shouted, for all the good that would do. She didn't even acknowledge him in any way, as if humanity was simply even beneath her poisoned notice.

She stepped toward the motel, and got within about seven feet of it before she paused, like she was hesitating. But Dean knew it wasn't that at all. The spell was actually doing what it was supposed to do. Disgust curved her mouth once more. "Magic. Is there anything filthier?"

"You're just laying up easy jokes for me, aren't you?" The demon replied. "Seriously, I hate it. Make me work for them."

Euryale gave him a dismissive wave, and he was thrown up against the wall of the motel, and pinned there like a butterfly on a mounting board. The demon couldn't move, and Dean felt his attempts to do so, his struggle in vain against a greater force. They were both now prisoners in his own body. How was that for irony?

"Enough!" Cass said, and stepped forward, and that was as far as he got before she flicked her hand back, and he disappeared. The demon thought that was hilarious. She thought so little of him she didn't even bother to kill him, she just sent him to the cornfield.

"Do you think this pathetic spell is going to stop me?" she sneered.

It took the demon a moment to find his voice, and yet even when he did, he found it difficult to work Dean's vocal cords. If only Euryale wasn't pushing him down too, he might have taken over the demon. "It already has."

Judging from her deep frown, she didn't like that at all. Still, Dean hadn't really expected her next move. She simply reached up and pulled her sunglasses off, exposing not eyes but sockets filled with amber light that glowed like molten honey. It was what the heart of the sun probably looked like, if you could gaze upon it at all. But Dean didn't feel any heat at all from the gaze.

No, he just felt cold and numb, as his skin suddenly became stone.


	12. Crystal Ball

_**12 – Crystal Ball**_

This was a fucking nightmare. Sam kept hoping he'd wake up, even though he knew he was already awake.

He could do nothing but watch. He'd tried to move, but found himself rooted to the spot. He wasn't even sure Euryale had deigned to notice him until that moment. Did it matter? What was Sam going to do against a god who couldn't be killed? She'd sent Cass away with a flip of her wrist. And Dean …

Just like the Demon Dean transition, it happened so fast it was ludicrous. She'd had him pinned up against the wall, even though the asshole continued to taunt her, like this playing field was at all equal. And then she took off her glasses, and he was a statue. Sam was too startled to even say a word. It was unreal.

If the demon had wanted to kill Dean, it had succeeded. And now Sam was left all alone with a god he couldn't even slow down. He was damned if she was going to kill Cassie, but if the spell didn't hold … what could he do? This fight had been over before it began. The spell was all they had.

It seemed to be holding for now, as Euryale kept trying to press forward against an invisible barricade, but it started to fall apart. She could pass through it eventually. Sure, it would hurt her, but what did pain even mean to an invulnerable immortal? Sam wanted to attack her anyway, even though it was suicide. Better to die trying something than to simply stand by and watch. But even the ability to move had been taken away from him. He tried, but he may as well have been turned to stone too. All he could do was stand there as everything went to hell.

She was pushing closer, the spell an almost tangible thing, a shimmer in the air, and for a second, Sam felt a spike of hope. It almost looked like Dean had moved. But no, it was just a mirage.

And that's when Sam saw the red sigil on the right arm glowing bright. The Mark of Cain was lit up like it was on fire. There was a sound like ice cracking in a spring thaw, and even Euryale looked towards Dean, shocked, as the stone encasing him cracked.

They were fine black spiderwebs of lines, radiating out from the Mark, but soon spread all over his body. For once, Sam was glad Dean had the Mark, because apparently you couldn't turn it stone.

Euryale stared in disbelief. "What the hell ..?" Not very god like.

Finally the stone started to fall, and Dean's head was the first thing exposed. Demon Dean took a huge breath, and then smiled crazily. "That was fun. Let's do that again." He managed to take a step forward, and the rest of the stone crumbled off him like powder.

"You –" She took a step back, and seemed as honestly flabbergasted as a god ever could be. "You have the Mark."

"No shit! Let me guess. You're the goddess of geniuses?"

She scowled. "Do not speak to me so flippantly, damned creature."

Demon Dean was really enjoying this. He started walking towards her, knife in his right hand, although he wisely kept behind the spell line. "What are you going to do about it, sweetheart?"

She simply pointed at him, and Dean dropped to his knees and started vomiting blood. "I'm still a god, you parasite." On second glance, Dean wasn't only barfing blood. There were little things in it that started crawling and flying away. He was vomiting blood and wasps. What the fuck? What kind of David Cronenberg night mare was this?

Euryale held up her hand against the invisible barricade, and Sam could see it waiver, the air as frantic in its motion as a heat mirage in the desert.

Then the second worst thing that could happen then happened, proving that this simply wasn't their day: Cassie's door opened. The second she stepped out, Sam realized the spell had not only affected Dean.

Her eyes were glowing with a pale green light, and static electricity caused blue sparks to fall from her hair. "Hello, sister," she said. It was Cassie's voice, but also, at the same time, it wasn't. It sounded like a woman with a deeper voice was speaking at the same time.

Fantastic. Medusa had joined the party.

Euryale glared at Cassie. "You're early."

Cassie made a hand gesture that encompassed the parking lot, but was just indicating the spell. "Powerful magic calls to me."

Euryale made a noise best described as a doubtful hum. "You and your affinity for that garbage."

"Time to go, sister. Unless you want to sit down and discuss it." Cassie idly waved her hand in Dean's direction, and he finally stopped coughing up blood and wasps, but the amount he'd already barfed up was huge. Must have been at least half his blood volume, judging from the pool of it that was now discoloring the parking lot. Dean rolled over onto his back and appeared to be breathing heavily, so at least he was still alive, in some form or another.

"A mongrel traitor like you doesn't belong in our family."

"You have three seconds to leave or I'm turning your hair into electric eels."

"This is not over," she snapped. But after that, Euryale disappeared, and Sam felt himself released from the invisible vise grip.

"Holy shit," he said. That was his first and last words too often in situations like this. In an odd way, it was sort of comforting that things kept happening that were so batshit insane he had no frame of reference for them. The world was indeed full of wonders and mind numbing horrors. He looked at Medusa who still had glowing eyes and sparks in her hair. "Is Cassie in there?"

"She is," Medusa replied. "And she's fine. I never intended to hurt her. I'm part human, after all." She pointed down at Dean, who was still on his back, still panting, in no particularly hurry to get up and move. Assuming he could. "How is this a guardian and evil?"

"He's wearing the Mark of Cain."

"Ah. How unfortunate for him."

"Can you remove it?" Sam knew it was unlikely, but hey, if you had a sort of friendly god in your presence, you had to ask.

She shook her head. "It's more powerful magic than I currently have access to."

"Hey, don't do me any favors, asswipe," Demon Dean said, the vitriol aimed squarely at Sam.

Well, since Medusa was here and not currently trying to kill him, Sam supposed he could ask her for a little more. "His human side was submerged casting this spell to protect you. Can you help him regain control?"

Dean sat up. "Hell no. Don't even think you're getting rid of me that easy, Chuckles."

Medusa studied him a moment. "Perhaps."

"Fuck off," Dean snapped.

But she walked right up to him – clearly he was still too weak or drained to stand – and touched his forehead. Dean collapsed back to the pavement, arm splashing in the puddle of blood and wasps. "What did you do to him?" Sam asked. Most of the wasps had flown away, and none seemed to be actively stinging him or anyone else, which was the smallest of mercies possible.

"I've helped him as much as I can. The rest is up to your brother."

Sam looked down at him, passed out next to the pond of blood, and hoped Dean hadn't completely given up yet. Because if he had, they were fucked.

* * *

Dean was aware he was dying, but it happened so fast.

Since he was watching as the demon did his thing, he only knew he was turning to stone when both he and the demon found it impossible to breathe. It didn't bother the demon at all. Why did he care? He couldn't actually die.

But even Dean could feel the burn of the Mark. It was almost like it was angry, as if the physical assault was an insult somehow. It seemed way too hot, like it should be burning through his skin, muscle and bone, but somehow it wasn't.

He heard the stone crack. The amount of power the Mark was giving off was insane, and he thought reasonably impossible … except, no. He felt that when he killed Abbadon too. It was like it was tapping into something way beyond him. The Mark wasn't so much a mark as a conduit for something else. He couldn't say what, because he honestly didn't know. It was simply ancient and so far beyond him he couldn't even grasp the smallest fragment of it. He was like an ant encountering a whale for the first time. What the hell was that thing, and how could anything so big and powerful even exist in the universe he's familiar with? Except Dean already knew much in this universe was simply beyond him. Too vast, too strange, too … well, fucked up. And of course he was contemplating all of this while his skin burned, and he suffocated, so it was a little hard to focus.

But the demon broke through, and Dean honestly didn't know if Sam or Euryale was more surprised by this turn of events. He did get the sense he pissed her off, which was a bonus as far as Dean was concerned.

Still, this had exhausted him. Dean kind of lost the thread of what was going on for a little bit. Could you pass out if you were simply a prisoner in your own head? He must have, because the next thing he was aware of was the demon on all fours, vomiting up blood and live insects. Wasps, in fact. He hated wasps. How the fuck was he barfing them?

The answer was simple: god shit. The answer to the most inexplicable crap was either god or angel shit. It was as painful as fuck too, although at least the demon was taking half of it. He couldn't feel the wasps internally, or at least he didn't think he could. It did feel like his insides were being shredded, but that was probably just the whole vomiting blood thing. Who knew?

Then the demon became agitated, and Dean got a sense of power. Sure, Euryale was still shedding energy like she was a star going nova, but now it was joined by something almost as powerful. Another god? Shit.

The pain and blood loss were wearing on him, and he wasn't quite following what was going on. The demon was stronger, and had complete control now. Even though he was detached from his body, he felt really tired. Like he could sleep for a thousand years, if he could only close his eyes. How did you close them when you didn't even have them, though? There was a quandary.

But Dean thought for a moment he had. He didn't feel any pain, or the constant struggle with the demon. He was just at peace, and all was quiet.

For a few seconds.

And then he found himself sitting on the hood of the Impala, looking up at a starry night sky. This was a memory, but it wasn't particularly special, so he couldn't pinpoint which one it was. "This was pity party night," he heard himself say. Except he hadn't.

Standing in the road was demon Dean, his eyes as black and empty as the sky above. "Sam was soulless and Cass wasn't at your beck and call 'cause he was fighting his angel war, and Lisa and Ben were gone. So you drove out here to get shitfaced and look at your gun like you were ever actually gonna pull that trigger, Dean. You're a fucking coward, and you were never serious about it."

Okay, yeah, that cleared that up. "Why do the demons work for them? If they want me dead, they can do it themselves. I ain't helping them." He imagined his bottle of whiskey was there, and what did you know, it was. He had a swallow and washed the taste of blood out of his mouth.

The demon sneered at him. "You're a miserable fuck. You survived death, Hell, and the apocalypse, and yet you still felt so bad for yourself you wanted to die. 'Cause you were lonely and your brother was mean and your boyfriend wasn't talking to you. Is it a human thing, to be so stupid? Or is it just you?"

"Probably just me. Sam's the brains of the operation." He helped himself to more whiskey. It actually tasted better now than it had that night, but that was the benefit of memories getting better and softer with age. Of course, that wasn't always true. Those Hell memories, for one thing. And hey, being torn up by a Hellhound and having to dig himself out of his own grave were pretty fucking traumatizing too, now that he thought about it. He still felt a jolt of fear when he heard dogs barking.

The demon stared at him, and Dean wondered why he wore so much plaid. It became a habit at some point, hadn't it? Without intention. Lisa had tried to improve his wardrobe, but without her around, he fell back into the same old habits. "Why the fuck are you being so nonchalant? We just threw up half your blood volume. I'm pretty sure you're going into shock."

Dean shrugged. "When Cass gets back, he can fix me up. Or Sam won't wait for him and call an ambulance. I'll be okay once I get my fluids up. And maybe a bug bomb. What the hell was that?"

The demon clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Bitch god. I'm sure she was making some sorta point about me being an insect or something."

Dean rolled his eyes. "I hate hearing about gods as literal as angels. But it makes sense, right? They got it from somewhere."

The demon nodded, and then seemed to remember he was angry at him, and stiffened, frowning. "What's your fucking deal, Dean? Why isn't any of this bothering you?"

Dean took another swallow of whiskey, and leaned back against the windshield. He could almost feel it, cold and solid beneath his back. "You lost."

"Excuse me?"

"Think about it. If you and the Mark were still in full control of my body, I wouldn't be going into shock. And also, why are you here with me? You were running the show, and now you're hanging out in my subconscious or whatever. Something happened and you got your ass kicked back to the cheap seats with me. I'm guessing it was a god, right? Those assholes are always up to something."

The demon came walking right up to the car, hands balled into fists at his side. He was very much not happy, and Dean was finding it hard not to laugh. He liked seeing it in distress. It was good it got to know what that was like. "Get this straight: you will never really win over me, Dean. You're branded with the Mark. And even if some celestial being takes enough pity on you to remove it, I'm still a part of you. Hell, I am you. I'm the part you don't like to think about. I'm your shadow, and I've saved your ass so many fucking times you should never stop thanking me."

Dean made a "yap yap yap" gesture with one hand, and took another swig of whiskey with the other. Distantly, he was aware of a chill that wasn't going away, and he imagined that might be the shock overtaking his physical body. That's where letting the demon take over might be advantageous, heal him right up, but Dean had already lost control once. He wasn't losing control again.

"Oh really?" the demon said, and grabbed him by the collar and yanked him off the car. Dean had just hit the ground when the demon started pounding his face. "I'm better than you," the demon said, between punches. "I'm stronger, I'm faster, and inevitable." There were too many cracks; Dean lost count of all the broken bones in his face as the demon unloaded with all its physical force on him, sitting on his chest and trying to pound his skull flat. "You always lose to me, Dean. And nothing your boyfriend, or your brother, or that bitch ass Hell god you have in your pocket can change any of that."

Blood was filling his throat, choking him, making it hard to breathe. Dean had slipped his hand inside his coat pocket, although he blocked an incoming punch with his left. The Demon grabbed his hand, and snapped his wrist like the bones were nothing but pretzel sticks. "You arrogant, broken piece of garbage. You will never beat me. If we fight, I always win. It's survival of the fittest asshole, and that's me."

Dean pulled out his .45, put it point blank against the side of the demon's head, and fired.

It was like it instantly deflated, the skull collapsing as blood, brain tissue, and pulverized bones splattered all over the road. Dean bucked his body off before it fell completely, and rolled over on his stomach to spit out blood and teeth. It probably would have hurt more if he ever forgot this was all in his head. "Yeah, well, I'm still the original Dean fucking Winchester, dick," he said, climbing to his feet. Just for good measure, he shot his demon self in the head one more time. There wasn't a hell of a lot left.

This was not the last battle, not by a long shot, but it felt good to get a win by TKO, even if just once.


	13. Ballad of Big Nothing

_**13 – Ballad of Big Nothing**_

Even though he'd woken up in much worse places in his life, Dean still hated waking up in a hospital.

There was always a lag between waking up and remembering how you got there, and those memories never held anything pleasant. Such as now, when he remembered vomiting wasps. Could a hospital do anything about that?

"Dean," Sam said, standing up from the chair where he'd been waiting. He looked tired and a little stressed out, which was probably a given in a god fight. "Are you okay?"

He wanted to be sarcastic, point out he was in a hospital so he must be great, but then he realized he wasn't asking about his physical state. "Yeah. Demon's on time out. I'm back."

Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair. His body language alone told him some major shit had gone down. "Euryale has backed off, mainly because the spell caused Medusa to come out early."

"Oh shit. What about Cassie?"

"I've talked to her. I think. She says Medusa is talking about "sharing consciousness", whatever that means, and Cassie seems amenable to it, especially since she has powers now."

Dean nodded, looking around to see what he was attached to. Seemed like just saline bags, which he took as a positive sign. "Do we trust Medusa?"

Sam let out a humorless laugh. "Yeah, I know. I've been looking, but I can't find anything on exorcizing gods, so we may have no choice in this matter."

"That fucking sucks."

"Tell me about it."

Dean eased the saline drip's needle out of his own arm, and Sam said, "What the hell, Dean?"

"Let's get out of here. I'm fine." Of course blood started coming out of the needle hole, but there was no help for that now.

It was then the door opened, and a slightly frazzled looking Cass walked in. "You're alive," Sam exclaimed. So there was some doubt.

Cass just nodded, and looked at Dean with concern. "As we all are, it seems."

At his look, Dean shook his head. "It's nothing major, just blood loss. I'm ready to go."

Cass continued giving him concerned look number three. "Blood loss?"

"Sam, you tell him. I'd rather not relive it."

So Sam caught Cass up on what had happened after Euryale sent him away, and Dean stepped into his mildly bloodstained jeans (he'd had worse), and was suddenly glad he wore a black t-shirt today. Blood didn't show. He could still kind of feel it, though, and smell it. Shirt hadn't completely dried out yet.

He got a bit of a head rush and stumbled a bit, but Cass was suddenly there, steadying him with a hand to the shoulder. Dean gave him a nod of thanks, and tried to pretend he hadn't just shaken a dead wasp out of his boot. But he had.

He then remembered to ask Cass, "Is that energy gone?"

Again that stare, like he was trying to punch a hole through the back of his skull with just his thoughts. Then he nodded. "It's gone."

Maybe that was the one good thing that came out of all of this.

As soon as he was dressed, and Sam grabbed his laptop, Cass gave them a lift (well, a teleportation) back to the motel, but Cassie was gone. According to Sam, as soon as she knocked the demon out, she disappeared. She returned briefly when he was at the hospital, which was when she supposedly talked to Sam, but then she was gone again.

As Dean and Sam began packing up their shit, Dean had to ask Cass, "Is there any chance Cassie's still alive in there?"

Cass considered it for a long time. Long enough that it started to worry him. "Perhaps. Maybe it is like angel possession. Not in the requiring of consent, but in keeping the host alive."

"But a really powerful angel, like Lucifer, burns out his host, right?" Sam said. "So wouldn't a god burn through their host, simply because they are a god, and that much more powerful?"

Cass shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. This is new territory for me."

"But you would think so," Dean said, and then seriously wished he hadn't. He should have kept his mouth shut, and just pretended they had succeeded in saving her, even though it was clear they hadn't.

Weirdly enough, it was Cass who decided to be optimistic for once. "Maybe not. The universe is a very strange place. It's possible Medusa doesn't kill her hosts."

Dean almost said, "And it's possible I'll turn into a pixie," but didn't. Couldn't he just for once believe things weren't as bleak as they seemed? He should try it at least once. Surprise everyone; surprise himself.

The only problem was, you couldn't force a happy ending where there wasn't one. And Dean didn't see happiness anywhere around this.

* * *

It seemed like the death cult, whatever was left of them, had packed their bags and gone into hiding. Dean even called the minotaur's number again, but this time they found the number was disconnected. They decided to drop by the pier on the way out of town, just to make sure he wasn't still hanging around.

Dean seemed back to his usual self, although he remained tired. Then again, he did just get out of the hospital, so Sam supposed he had to cut him some slack. Still, he kept watching for any signs that the demon was back.

When Dean left to get some food before they hit the road, Sam had a moment alone with Cass. He told him what Medusa had done, and asked, "Is it gone for … well, not good, but for now?"

Cass frowned, looking out of the car into the dark streets beyond. It had finally started to rain, which he had been led to believe happened all the time in Seattle. Apparently not. "This may have bought Dean some time. But it couldn't have been much."

Sam nodded, not surprised, and tried to will away the despair that erupted inside him. They couldn't save Cassie. They still couldn't save Dean. This whole trip was a bust. And he still had to get Crowley that damned (and cursed) book. Cass must have picked up on his mood, because he said, "Don't give up hope. There has to be something out there."

"I saw the demon again, Cass. Dean was completely gone. And the worst part? I know it's coming back, and I know why. It's so much stronger than Dean. Hell, all of us. The Mark resisted the power of a god. That's frightening. What hope do we have against that?"

Cass shook his head, clearly searching for something profound or comforting to say. Dean had to pick that moment to return to the car with his bags of food. He tossed one in Sam's lap as he got in. "What, were you guys talking about me or something?" Dean asked, looking between them curiously.

"I have a plan for the book," Sam said.

Dean looked at him in that way that said he knew he was lying about something, but he was going to play along for now. "Crowley's book?"

"That's the one. Since no human can touch it without earning a death sentence, I thought maybe you could handle it, Cass. Shouldn't hurt you, right?"

Cass nodded. "I should be fine."

"Great. Then you can scan all the pages into the database for me before we give the book to Crowley."

Cass looked confused. "Scan it? How?"

Dean smirked. "Copying it? Great idea."

"The book's dangerous. We may as well have our own on the off chance Crowley ever tries to use it against us."

"I'm still not sure how I'm supposed to do that." Cass said.

"It's a machine back at the Bunker. I'll show you how to use it. It's not a big deal."

Cass didn't look completely convinced, and Dean snickered. "You teaching him to use a computer? This I have to see."

That made Cass frown. "I'm not helpless."

"Never said you were," Dean said, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. "Just … remember when I tried to teach you how to use voice mail?"

"That electronic woman was very rude," Cass insisted.

Sam smiled, as it was a pretty funny memory. Of course, Dean teaching Cass anything was usually a set up for a huge, unintentional comedy sketch. Dean actually could be a decent teacher, unless he was in one of his moods, then all bets were off. Sam hoped he fared better with Cass, because at least he knew what to expect, and he felt he was more patient than Dean. Sometimes.

But this didn't quite distract him from the fact that Dean started the car without eating. His food was still sitting in its bag on the seat, as if he'd already forgotten about it. And Dean once again unconsciously rubbed his right arm.

Was the Mark already bothering him again? Sam wouldn't think it could, but why not? Battering a few harpies and killing a few demons had only temporarily sated its bloodlust. It would need more, and it would continue pushing Dean to the edge until he fell right over.

Sam felt like they had failed Cassie, even though this was a zero sum game right from the start. But he couldn't shake the fear that this was merely the beginning of the failures.

He didn't want to fail Dean too, even though now he could see nothing but hopelessness on the horizon. Damn it, he would find a way to save him from that black eyed bastard, or he would die trying.

After all, wouldn't Dean do the same thing for him?

* * *

The End


End file.
